Nice To See You
by fakelib
Summary: Ladybug and Adrien keep running into each other. Literally. (ladrien)
1. Part One

**Warning: blood, violence**

 **I do not own ML**

 _ **Part One**_

* * *

 **le 10 septembre**

Adrien has never had a peaceful night of sleep in his life. For as far back as he could remember, his sleep has been interrupted with everything from horrifying, reality-altering nightmares, to the inability to sleep in general. Some nights he's up late completing his homework after a schedule-packed day, and others he's far too invested in a show or book to settle down prior to reaching the conclusion. But ever since his mother has disappeared, and ever since Hawk Moth has emerged as a threat, more often than not he's plagued by insomnia, by stress and worry and paranoia and his body's refusal to _let. him. rest._

So, that night, when Adrien climbs into bed— _before_ midnight, for once—and falls into a quiet, content slumber, he knows it's too good to be true.

A loud shatter tears through the silence, and Adrien bolts upright with a start, his heart slamming against his ribs and a scream on the edge of his lips. The person that tumbles through his window rolls across the floor until they slam into the couch with a groan. Plagg continues to snore on Adrien's nightstand, completely unfazed by the noise.

Adrien slowly slides out of bed, his thoughts spinning a mile a minute. Is it a robber? Kidnapper? Akuma? He creeps towards the window, his legs shaking slightly, and he ducks behind the couch. He carefully peers over the back and looks at the floor to inspect the trespasser.

"Son of a bitch," Ladybug hisses, rubbing the back of her neck.

Adrien shoots to his feet in shock. Ladybug is sitting on the floor with her back to the couch, glass in her hair and her red and black suit illuminated by the moonlight.

"Wha— _Ladybug?"_ he stutters.

He sees her stiffen. She whips her head around, and for the first time since her arrival, her frightened blue eyes lock onto his shocked green ones.

Ladybug scrambles to her feet and steps back. "A-Adrien?!"

Adrien stares at her with wide eyes, nonplussed. He's having a hard time believing he's not still asleep. "Uh..."

She looks around the dark room, as if realizing where she is for the first time. She observes the familiar arcade games and the library and the computers and the bed and, finally, the boy in front of her. Her hands fly up to her mouth. "Oh— _oh my god."_

"It's okay—" he says weakly, but he doesn't think she hears him.

"I'm so sorry!" she apologizes quickly. Her words begin to rush from her mouth. "I didn't mean to, I-I was fighting an akuma, and when I wasn't looking he managed to grab me and threw me in the air and I accidentally crashed into your—"

His whirling thoughts abruptly screech to a halt. "Wait, there's an akuma?"

"Yeah," she sighs. She glances mournfully at the fragmented window, then back at Adrien. Her face is dark red with embarrassment. "The window will be repaired by the Miraculous Cure, but..." She scratches the back of her head sheepishly. A few shards of glass sprinkle from her hair. "I'm _really sorry."_

Adrien regains the ability to think. He quickly waves his hands in dismissal. "No, no, don't worry about it," he insists earnestly. His eyes fill with concern. "But, are you okay? That was quite a crash."

Ladybug's smile is exhausted, but thankful. "I'm a little sore, but I'll be fine." She rolls her shoulder to crack her joint, then grinds her teeth together in pain. "Ah, _motherfucker."_

Adrien reaches out to her fretfully. "D-do you want to sit down? For a moment?"

She shakes her head. "I can't," she laments. "Chat isn't here yet, and I can't let this akuma cause anymore damage." As if on cue, a loud explosion goes off down the street, followed by a chorus of screams and car alarms. She pulls out her yo-yo and flashes him an apologetic glance. "Gotta run."

Before Adrien can protest, Ladybug rushes towards the window, tosses her yo-yo, and swings out of sight.

He blinks at the window for a moment after she leaves, his heart still beating a little too quickly. A part of him is still struggling to process everything that happened in those few minutes of interaction, but when he hears another explosion he resigns to digest it later.

Adrien hurries back to his bed. He snatches Plagg off the nightstand and shakes him frantically. _"Wake up!_ There's an akuma down the street! Ladybug needs help!"

The kwami peels open a single eye, clearly annoyed to have his sleep interrupted. He looks like he's about to remark something insulting, but when he spots the broken window behind Adrien, both eyes fly open. Suddenly, he's wide awake. "Oh, what the _hell_ did you do now?"

* * *

 **le 13 septembre**

A few days have passed since the night Ladybug accidentally crashed into Adrien's room. After he transformed, he hopped through the remnants of his window and helped her defeat the rampaging akuma. And, when he returned to his room after the battle, Adrien found his window completely crack-free, just as Ladybug had promised it would be. He hasn't seen her since, neither as Chat nor Adrien, but he supposes the fact that there aren't any akumas to draw her out is a good thing.

After the morning bell rings, signaling the beginning of first hour, Ms. Garneau passes out a review packet about the French Revolution around the room. When she gets to Alya and Marinette's desk, and sees the latter girl's empty seat, she sighs knowingly. _"Again?"_

Alya shrugs helplessly. "I don't control her punctuality, Ms. G."

The teacher just shakes her head and marks Marinette late before moving onto the next desk.

Once everyone has a packet, Ms. Garneau assigns everyone into partnerships to work on the classwork. She reads the pairs off of a list: Alya and Nino, Helene and Charlot, Mireille and Nathaniel, Kim and Mathieu, Alix and Henri, and Mylène and Sabrina, which leaves...

"...and, finally, Chloé and Adrien."

For the first time in her student career, Chloé wastes no time. She happily seizes Adrien by the arm and drags him into Sabrina's seat. The boy throws a pleading look in Nino's direction, hoping for some sort of moral support or assistance, but Nino's too busy flirting with Alya instead of doing the classwork to notice. Adrien sighs with defeat on the inside.

At first, he thinks he can just ignore her. Luckily, he's very familiar with Chloé's messy behavior, and disregarding her... _interest_ in him isn't very difficult anymore, even as she rants and blusters and slides right into his personal space bubble. Adrien reads through the questions and begins to answer them, occasionally giving the attentive girl a friendly smile or replying to her doting questions. It's when he reaches the penultimate question on the second page that he becomes reaware of his blond friend, who has tactfully cornered him to the end of the bench and is nearly sitting in his lap.

He places a gentle hand on her shoulder and tries to push her away, but she doesn't budge. Adrien looks at her. "Hey, Chlo...?"

She scoots closer. "Hmm?"

Adrien grips the desk to keep himself from toppling onto the floor. He strains his voice to sound kind. "Could you, um, maybe, move over a bit?"

Chloé bats her eyelashes. "Oh, am I in your way?"

"Just a little."

"Sorry, I didn't even notice," she lies. "I guess we just..." She runs her fingers up his shoulder. "... _gravitate_ towards each other..."

Adrien shies from her touch, but in doing so he feels himself begin to slip off the seat. He latches onto the desk, causing it to jerk slightly, and his pen nearly rolls off the surface. He looks at her anxiously. "That's nice."

Chloé looks like she's about to lean towards him further, and Adrien internally begs her not to, because he's barely hanging onto his chair and if she moves any closer, he'll inevitably hit the ground. But before he can meet his doom on the wooden floor, the window to Adrien's right shatters open. Chloé detaches and distances herself from him in record speed, and Adrien has half a second to rejoice before Ladybug flies into him and slams him onto the bench.

Ladybug peels her eyes open. She shakes her head groggily, accidentally tossing a few more shards of glass onto the boy beneath her. Adrien is sandwiched between the heroine and the bench, and he's too paralyzed by shock to move. It takes a few more seconds for Ladybug's vision to refocus, but once it does, her gaze lands directly on his. He watches speechlessly as the disorientation in her blue eyes is replaced by utter horror.

"Adrien!" she squeaks. She quickly tries to get off of him, but her unstable body can't keep up with the momentum, and she accidentally slides onto the floor instead. A moment later, she pops back up, her face as red as her suit. "A-a-are you okay?"

Adrien blinks. He slowly props himself up onto his elbows, his head spinning slightly, and he throws her a reassuring smile. "That's my line," he laughs, still not completely in sync with reality, but he bites his tongue when he sees her red face grow even darker.

Suddenly, they both seem to simultaneously become aware of the people still present in the room. Adrien and Ladybug slowly turn their heads to look at the other side of the room, and Adrien deflates when he sees his classmates' gaping expressions. Chloé is standing in the aisle with wide blue eyes, appearing to be speechless for the first time in her life. Even Ms. Garneau, who appears to be halfway out of her seat, is staring at the two of them in shock. The only person who seems to be somewhat functional is Alya, who's silently filming them from her phone with a devious gleam in her hazel eyes.

Ladybug stands and clears her throat awkwardly. She glances at the window, then back at Adrien. Her voice is soft. "Sorry... _again."_

Adrien sits up completely. He wipes some glass from his shirt. "It's okay. Again."

She holds out a hand and helps him to his feet. He swears her fingers linger on his for an extra second before she pulls away, but his hand is still left tingling from her touch. She stares at him with concern. "Are you really sure you're okay?"

"Positive."

The concern only seems to subdue by a fraction, but she knows she doesn't have time to waste. "All right," she relents reluctantly. "I have an akuma to catch, but..."

Adrien rubs his head. "It's _really okay,"_ he says gently. His face feels a little too hot. "Go do your job."

Ladybug still seems hesitant to leave, but she steps back towards the window, and with a final salute to the class, she flies back out to fight the akuma.

It takes a single beat of absolute silence to pass before the trance breaks. Everyone rushes from their seats and crowds around Adrien, Alya and Nino fighting their way to the front.

"Oh my god!"

"There's _no way_ that just happened."

"Aw, his face is so red!"

"That was so _cute."_

"Dude, did you feel her boobs?"

"All right, all right, back away," Ms. Garneau cuts through the chatter. She shoos at her students. "Please _avoid_ the broken glass."

His classmates give him air. Adrien doesn't think his face has ever burned this much. Ms. Garneau places a worried hand on his shoulder. "Do you need to go to the nurse, Adrien?"

"No," he mumbles, mortified, but then he remembers that there's currently an akuma terrorizing the city and, apparently, His Lady. "Oh, uh, yes, actually. Yeah."

 _"I_ can assist him there, Ms. Garneau," Chloé offers loudly.

"No!" Adrien yells. He stammers. "I-I mean, I can go. By myself. Without anyone."

Before Chloé has the chance to demand, he crosses the room and exits the classroom, the door slamming behind him in the faces of his laughing classmates.

* * *

 **le 1 octobre**

Fortunately for Adrien, the next few weeks proceed without anymore untimely property damage. There are still akumas, of course, but none of them result in his partner getting tossed through anymore windows, which he supposes is a good sign. _Unfortunately_ for Adrien, the aftermath of the Ladybug incident resulted in the poor boy being subjected to two weeks of relentless teasing on behalf of his classmates, along with constantly being accused of having a crush on Ladybug—which, given that it was completely true, was difficult to deny.

Via the Ladyblog, the news of the 'Ladybug and Adrien moment' had spread around the entire school, and it got to the point where people he didn't even know were putting up posters, shoving pictures of Ladybug in his locker, laughing at him in the hallway, and much, much more. And, what's worse, those that didn't snicker or make fun of him instead begged him to profess his love for the aforementioned heroine, which grew more and more difficult to debunk with every request. By the end of the week, Adrien had blushed so much he was surprised his skin wasn't stained that horrid shade of red.

It took a whole other week for the entire thing to blow over and for the teenagers to go back to focusing on their own lives, but when it did, there was only one black-haired classmate that Adrien was still willing to call his friend. It seemed as though Marinette was the only person in the whole school who didn't harass him for information. Perhaps it's only because she didn't witness the moment herself and is therefore somewhat out of the loop (she wasn't there when Ladybug crashed and she refused to view it from the blog, no matter how much Alya begged her to), but Adrien kind of preferred it that way.

Marinette appeared to empathize with his pain, to the point of seeming to be embarrassed by their peers' comments herself. And she was the one who defended him the most, albeit a little timidly, but she still _stood up_ for him, which was a lot more than he could say for his other alleged 'friends,' who, rather than assisting him, teased him the hardest out of everyone (he's looking at you, Nino).

But it's over now. The jokes have officially died, and the meme has been milked for all it was worth. He hasn't heard anyone mention him and Ladybug in the same sentence in three days, and he doesn't think he's ever felt so relieved over something like this in his life.

Adrien settles his head against the headrest of his seat, finally able to feel himself relax as he rides home from school. It feels good to be out of the woods. Now all he has to do is hope he never sees Ladybug outside his mask when there are other people around to witness it. It shouldn't be that hard, considering the fact that he can count on one hand every coincidental meeting he's had with Ladybug as Adrien.

He jinxes it.

All of a sudden, Adrien hears the distant sound of an enormous splash. Instantly alert, his eyes dart out the window to search for the source of the noise, which turns out to be giant water balloons falling on the streets a few blocks away, and he's instantly positive it's the work of an akuma. Before Adrien has the chance to leave the limo and transform, something slams onto the roof of his limo, leaving a sizable dent in the ceiling, and rolls over the side of the vehicle onto the street.

Adrien shouts in surprise and the Gorilla hits the brakes. Adrien quickly unbuckles hit seat belt, throws open the door, and stumbles outsides, his breathing heavy and his heart still beating a mile a minute. His eyes fall on the ground to look at whatever hit the car, and—

—And, at this point, should he really be so surprised?

Ladybug slowly sits up, one hand rubbing her head and the other leaning on the ground to keep her upright. She's still clearly dizzy from the impact, but after only a moment of gathering her bearings, she attempts to stand up. The premature movement causes her legs to sway, and Adrien's eyes widen when he realizes she's going to fall again.

"Whoa!" he says, and he opens his arms just as the heroine collapses against his chest.

Ladybug blinks sluggishly before opening her eyes completely. At first all she sees is Adrien's chest, but she gradually raises her eyes until they land on his face. The blood rushes into her cheeks. The only noise she can make is an unintelligible whine.

His laugh is only a little bit hysterical. "Nice... nice of you to drop in."

Familiarity passes over Ladybug's face, but it's gone before he can decode it. She tries to stand up straight, but she begins to sway again and Adrien has to grip her to keep her from falling. Her eyes travel to the damaged limo, and she slaps a hand on her face. "Why does this keep happening?" she moans to herself.

A part of Adrien hates how cute she looks when she gets embarrassed. The other part is savors it. "I guess ladybugs aren't so lucky after all," he jokes. It feels so weird, making Chat-like comments to his partner without her knowing it's actually him.

Ladybug tries to glare at him, but her face is too red for it to be all that threatening. "Sh-shut up."

Adrien opens his mouth to reply, but the sound of the akuma dropping another water balloon cuts him off. Ladybug pulls away from him, marginally more stable, and Adrien's arms feel too empty.

She pulls out her yo-yo. Her hands fidget. "I... I have to..."

 _"Go,"_ Adrien encourages, waving her off. "We've been over this already."

She ducks her head. Her face burns. "Don't remind me."

Adrien silently watches her throw her yo-yo and swing off down the street. Once she's gone, he feels Plagg begin to wriggle inside his shirt, and he knows he should be in the process of finding a place to transform, but for a moment, all he can think about is the feeling of holding her in his arms.

* * *

 **le 19 octobre**

Adrien pokes his head out of the alley and looks down the dark, empty street. When he's sure the coast is clear, he creeps out of his hiding place and quietly paces down the sidewalk, his hands shoved in the pockets of his hoodie. He and Ladybug were in the middle of patrol, and everything had been going smoothly until he heard a loud crash and something that sounded like a scream from a nearby alley. On instinct, Chat activated his Cataclysm and hopped down to the alley to save the victim, but then it turned out the 'crash' was a fallen trashcan, and the 'scream' was the meow of the stray cat that knocked it over.

Long story short, he hasn't seen Ladybug laugh so hard in her life.

As per usual, Chat had five minutes to hide before his transformation gave out. But when Plagg emerged from the ring—laughing at him, might he add—Adrien realized he forgot to refill his cheese supply, and no stores were open to provide him with any. Now, he has no choice but to head home and figure out a way to sneak up the side of his house and into his room, without any night vision or super-strength to aid him.

The moon is full. Adrien looks up at the sky, his green eyes reflecting the silver glow of the bright planet. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath of the cool, autumn air, releasing the tension that has worked its way underneath his skin. Perhaps walking home could do him some good, no matter how unconventional.

Behind his back, Adrien hears someone sigh in content. Thinking he was alone, he quickly glances over his shoulder, and he's startled to see Ladybug perched on the street lamp, seeming to be entranced by the light of the moon. Her whole body appears to reflect the luminescence—her black hair shines like the night sky, and her red suit seems to glow like fire. Her wondrous blue eyes have been replaced by stars.

Her eyes never leave the sky, but she knows he's there. She speaks without warning, her voice breathless. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

A thick lump in Adrien's throat prevents him from replying. He only nods his head, too hypnotized by her beauty to offer a more complex response.

Ladybug tears her eyes from the sky and looks down at him. He thinks he sees her cheeks pinken a little bit, but it's too dark for him to be sure. "What are you doing out by yourself so late?" she asks.

Adrien laughs a little nervously. "Oh, uh, I couldn't sleep, so I... thought I could tire myself out." At that moment, his body seems to decide it's the perfect time for him to let out a yawn.

She hums. "I guess that's accomplished, then."

His face burns.

With one last glance at the moon, Ladybug hops down from the lamppost to join him on the sidewalk. She rubs the back of her neck, and suddenly she looks nervous. Adrien is confused as to why until she says, "Hey... um, I don't think I ever apologized for breaking your limo."

Adrien has to fight to not roll his eyes. He swears she's too nice for her own good. "It's _fine,_ Ladybug," he says for what feels like the millionth time. "It got fixed, along with everything else—"

"I still feel liable for giving you a heart attack," she mumbles. _"Three_ heart attacks, to be precise."

"You were saving Paris," he points out. He uses his hands to mimic a balance. "Accidentally getting scared by a superhero, in return for a safe city, is a price I'm willing to pay."

She shuffles her feet, but he can see some of the stiffness leave her shoulders. "Well, in any case, I'm still sorry. I want to make it up to you somehow."

"You don't have to—"

"But I do!" she shouts. Realizing what she said, she quickly backtracks, "I-I mean, I need to make it up to you. If not for you, I need to do it for myself. Just so I can wipe this all off my conscience." When she sees he's still hesitant, she adds, _"Please,_ Adrien."

And when she says his name like that, he knows there's no way he's getting out of this.

He sighs through his nose, but he gives in. "If it'll help you sleep at night," he says, not unkindly.

"You have no idea," she murmurs under her breath, but her face does light up.

Adrien shoves his hands deeper into his pockets. He contemplates what he should say to her, until he says, "If you really want to make it up to me, you could walk me home."

He definitely sees her face pinken now. Ladybug pulls her eyes away from his. She clears her throat. "If... if that's what you want," she replies quietly.

The two of them walk in silence, but it isn't uncomfortable. Somewhere along the way, the little bit of distance between the two of them closes, and it's a matter of blocks before their shoulders are brushing. At the next corner, her hand is almost in his.

The walk is too short. Adrien and Ladybug walk up to the gate, and seeing that there's no reason for them to remain this close, they step away from each other.

"Thank you," he says softly.

"No problem," she answers, her voice just as soft. Ladybug's eyes linger on his face before she looks back at the tall gate. She changes the subject. "How did you even sneak out of here, anyway?"

"Magic," Adrien says honestly, his voice only a little bit bitter. "But now I have to figure out a way to get back in."

Ladybug turns back to him, and he can see the light bulb go off in her head. Her hand moves down to her yo-yo, and her lips spread into a mischievous smile.

"I think I can help you with that."

* * *

 **le 26 octobre**

Adrien walks through the entrance of the park, a bag of macarons in his hand and his footsteps echoed by the dry leaves crunching beneath his feet. Normally during lunch, he's accompanied by Alya, Nino, Marinette, or some combination of the three, but Marinette had rushed out of the school before anyone could stop her, and Alya and Nino went after her before Adrien had the chance to catch up. Left in their dust, he had no choice but to go ahead and waste his lunch hour all by himself.

But he didn't really mind. Adrien was used to solitude, and sometimes he even reveled in it. Besides, after what happened to her, he knows Marinette needed his friends' company much more than he did.

He hopes she's okay.

Adrien stops by an empty bench and sits down. He inhales the crisp air and takes a moment to relish the beautiful scene around him—the orange leaves tumbling across the grass, the chirping birds singing from the tree branches, the laughing families and children and couples and pet owners, all surrounded by the people they love. Today is one of the last reasonably warm days Paris will have before the cold finally settles, and Adrien is happy he's here to enjoy it with everyone else.

There's a weird noise above Adrien's head that sounds awfully similar to a sniffle. Confused, Adrien tilts his head and looks up, only to see two red and black-spotted legs swinging from a branch high above him.

Adrien blinks, wondering if he's imagining it, but the image doesn't change. He places his bag on the bench and stands up. "...Ladybug?"

Sure enough, Ladybug's head peers out over the branch. Even though she's high up, he can still tell that her face is flushed and her eyes are red. She blinks and wipes her eyes. "A-Adrien?"

He looks at her worriedly. Panic begins to rise in his chest. "What happened? Are you hurt? Is there an akuma? Can you get down? Is—?"

"No, I-I'm fine," she says. She wipes her nose with the back of her gloved hand. "I'm not... I'm okay."

Adrien purses his lips, anger beginning to course through his veins. The watery tone of her voice suggests that she's anything but okay. He opens his mouth, ready to interrogate her so he can destroy whoever made her cry, but at second thought he shuts it. The last thing Adrien needs to do today is cause an akuma just because His Lady is upset.

Slowly, he sets back and examines the tree. The trunk is thick and the branches are high out of reach, but years of climbing up his rock wall have endowed him with the skill to achieve this powerlessly. Picking up his bag and gripping the handle between his teeth, Adrien begins to ascend the tree.

Ladybug's eyes widen. "What do you think you're doing?"

"C'ing t' 'oo."

"What?"

Adrien grips a branch and hoists himself up. He momentarily takes the bag out of his mouth. "Coming to you," he repeats.

Her voice is wrought with worry. "What?! Why?"

He tightens his hold on the bark. His voice is calm. "You look like you could use some company."

"No, don't do that! What if you fall?"

Adrien heaves himself onto another branch. "I assume you'll catch me."

Ladybug shakes her head, but the sadness in her eyes begins to be outshined by amusement. "I don't know, I'm pretty comfortable up here. Don't really feel like moving."

He grips the branch Ladybug is seated on and pulls himself up. He can settles himself next to her and places the bag in his lap, his breath somewhat labored. "Well, if that's true, you'll be too lazy to kick me off."

She seems to contemplate this. "That's fair," she decides.

The two of them sit in silence, and Adrien takes the moment to adjust to the feeling of being so high up. It feels weird to be so far from the ground without his suit to protect him. He isn't all that afraid, though, because he knows, should something happen, Ladybug would catch him, whether she says she will or not.

Adrien turns his head to look at her. The ounce of amusement he saw on her face before has melted back into sorrow. His heart aches to see her so dismayed.

"Ladybug?" he asks gently. "What's wrong?"

Ladybug ducks her head. She's silent for a moment, seeming to decide whether she should divulge the cause of her tears. Eventually, she shakes her head. "It's stupid."

"It isn't stupid if it makes you upset."

"That's the thing. I shouldn't _be_ upset." She glares down at the ground. "I'm so used to this girl terrorizing me. And I know I shouldn't let her words get to me, but... this time, they really hurt."

He frowns. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Her eyes glance at him for a second. She quickly looks away. "I... I shouldn't."

"You don't have to say anything specific," he offers. "I won't pry."

She shakes her head again. "No, it's... you might figure out who I am."

Adrien wants to protest, but at the last second he decides he shouldn't. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," he claims. He nudges her shoulder. "But moping around in the trees isn't exactly a cure for feeling sad." Trust him, he knows.

A hint of a smile forms on her lips. "Do you have any better ideas?"

"I do, actually," he says. He shakes his bag of macarons, careful not to be too rough and accidentally break some of them. "Cookies."

For the first time, Ladybug laughs, and Adrien's heart sings. She looks at him, her blue eyes overflowing with thanks. "If you insist."

The rest of the lunch hour passes too quickly. After polishing off most of the cookies—one accidentally slipped from Adrien's hand and disappeared into the leaves on the ground, falling victim to a hungry squirrel—the two teenagers swing down from the branches and walk around the park. Ladybug talks about her hobbies and her favorite video games and her nameless friends, and Adrien finds himself witnessing a side of Ladybug he never quite experienced as Chat. It's a side that rings a few familiarity bells in the back of his mind, but he shuts them off before he has the chance to figure out why.

By the time Adrien has to leave, Ladybug seems to have forgotten what made her so upset in the first place. She wraps her arms around him in a hug, and her embrace sends a surge of warmth through his entire body, like a shock of electrocution. Her voice is overflowing with gratitude. "Thank you, Adrien. I... I really needed this."

He places his head on her shoulder and closes his eyes, savoring her touch. "Anytime," he says quietly.

She smiles at him, her eyes shining in the sunlight. "You're such a great friend."

The warmth is replaced by ice.

 **...**

When Marinette walks into class a few seconds before the bell rings, Alya sighs in relief. "Oh, _thank god_ she's alive."

"Ha ha," Marinette snips, sliding into the seat beside her friend. Alya wraps her arms around Marinette in a tight hug, and the other girl wheezes as the air is pumped out of her. She attempts to pry Alya's arms off of herself, but to no avail.

"We looked all over for you!" Nino exclaims.

"Chloé had no right to say that," Alya growls, her grip on her friend tightening. Marinette gags. "I'm gonna kill her. I'm gonna bash her head in and make her _scream—"_

"Whoa! _Whoa,"_ Marinette says, pushing Alya off of her. This time, the girl gives way. "Nobody is beating up anybody."

"She made you cry," Nino points out darkly. He raises a fist. "Let us at her."

Marinette shakes her head in disapproval. "No way. Not allowed. All violence is hereby banned."

"Since when have we _ever_ listened to the rules?"

"Alya..."

She laughs. "All right, all right." Her eyes turn into slits. "But if she _ever_ makes you cry again, I swear to _fuck—"_

Marinette hums. "In that case, I'll allow one punch. Each."

Nino cracks his knuckles. "That's all I need," he grins.

Alya rubs Marinette's shoulder. "But seriously, babe. Are you okay?"

For a brief second, Adrien swears her eyes dart towards him. But when he blinks, her eyes are only trained on Alya.

A reassuring smile spreads across her face. "I am now."

* * *

 **le 8 novembre**

When the final bell rings, Alya, Nino, and Adrien exit the classroom together. Marinette hadn't shown up to school today, apparently bedridden with a temperature of 38.3 °C, so Alya tags along with the two of them as they walk out the doors of the school.

"I have to go drop off this work at Marinette's house," Alya says, waving a manila folder in her hand. "Do either of you want to come with?"

Nino nods. "Yeah, sure."

"I wish I could, but I have a photo shoot," Adrien laments.

Alya frowns. "Oh, can't you be late just this once?" she pleads. "I know Mari would _really_ appreciate it if you came."

Nino snickers, but Adrien isn't sure why. He shakes it off. "Sorry, but Nathalie stressed that this was really important. It's been scheduled for months."

Alya groans. "Your dad sucks."

"Agreed," Nino chimes.

Adrien sighs. "Well, when you see her, can you at least tell her I hope she feels better?"

"Sure thing, man," Nino says. "I'm sure she'll—" At that moment, his eyes catch sight of something behind Adrien's back in the sky. His golden eyes grow wide with shock. "Oh, _shit—"_

Before Nino can give him any warning, something collides into Adrien's back, and the blond teen slams onto the ground.

Adrien hears a few students scream. The person on his back rolls off of him, gasping for breath. He thinks he hears his friends asking for him to respond, but the impact caused the wind to get knocked out of his chest, and he needs to take a few seconds to regain his breath before he can speak. Panting, he rolls onto his side, this time prepared to face the person he _knows_ he's about to see.

Sure enough, Ladybug is laying on the ground next to him, her eyes shut and a misplaced ribbon absent from her hair. She opens her eyes steadily, as if she knows who he's going to be as well and is just drawing out the process.

This time, she doesn't even looks embarrassed. "I thought we were past meeting like this," she mumbles.

"You were doing so well," Adrien remarks, his voice still a little breathless.

Ladybug begins to sit up, and Alya rushes over to help her, one hand clutching Ladybug's shoulder and the other filming the entire thing with her phone. Adrien is mildly impressed she managed to get it out and running so quickly.

Nino holds out his hands and helps his friend to his feet. Adrien tilts a little bit on his feet, and Nino grips him more tightly. "Dude, she _totally_ wiped you out."

"Yeah, thanks for telling me," Adrien grumbles, rubbing his head.

Alya sits Ladybug down on the steps, and Nino follows suit with Adrien. "Ladybug, you don't look so good," Alya observes worriedly.

She's right. Ladybug's face is pale and clammy, her eyes look glassy, and she's breathing a little too heavily to be normal.

But Ladybug shakes her head. "I'm not hurt, guys, I just have a fever."

Adrien frowns. "You shouldn't be exerting yourself like this," he chastises.

"I have to. There's an akuma attack happening at the Louvre," she explains. "I was just on my way there, when, well, a dizzy spell hit me." She scratches her head sheepishly. "Sorry, Adrien."

"You should go home," he says fretfully. "Let Chat Noir take care of this."

"He can't purify the akuma without me," Ladybug reminds him dolefully. She reluctantly pulls herself to her feet. "Speaking of which, I need to go."

Adrien doesn't want to let her go, but he knows he can't stop her. Before she leaves, he calls, "Be careful."

Ladybug smiles to him tiredly. Then, she tosses her yo-yo, wraps it around a lamppost, and swings around the corner in the direction of the museum.

Adrien's eyes are glued to the corner she disappeared behind. He only looks away when he feels someone lay a hand on his shoulder, and when he looks up, he sees Nino is barely holding back his laughter. "Bro, you are _so. whipped."_

* * *

 **le 14 novembre**

The akuma spits in Adrien's face. "Looks like daddy's boy isn't so special _now,_ huh?"

Adrien grits his teeth and struggles to escape the villain's iron hold. His feet are hanging over the edge of a tower on the Notre Dame, and any second now he's going to be released onto the street below. His wills his voice to stay calm. "Let me go, Marc."

The gleam in the older boy's brown eyes instantly changes from taunting to furious. "No. My name is The Model. _The_ Model. Nobody else is more famous than me, _especially_ some stupid, talentless teenager like _you."_

Adrien winces as Model's grip on his arms tightens. He feels his blood circulation getting cut off. Desperate, he tries to reason with his akumatized coworker. "Marc, please, I didn't know you were jealous—"

That was the wrong thing to say. "I am not _jealous!"_ he roars. "And my _name_ is _The Model!"_

Adrien anxiously searches for an escape, but he's too far from the roof, and The Model's grasp is too strong. He'll never be able to get away on his own.

He _cannot_ believe he let himself get caught. Not that he gave himself away on purpose, but he should've been able to run away in time, and he didn't. He's supposed to be a hero for god's sake, not a helpless victim. And now he has no choice but to wait for help, or... or the alternative.

Something crashes into Adrien's back unexpectedly, and he feels a split second of déjà vu before both boys fall back against the roof of the tower. Adrien tumbles a few meters away before skidding to a stop. He hisses as he feels his arms and legs burn with fresh scrapes, but he prefers these injuries to the ones he would've gotten if he landed on the streets.

He looks up, and he sees his savior, Ladybug, in all her glory, propped on one knee, her yo-yo in her hands and a glare on her face. For a second, her eyes lock with his, but before he has the chance to speak, The Model yanks him off the ground and tightens his hands around his neck.

Adrien gasps and claws at the akuma's hands, frantically trying to get him to release him, but to no luck. Ladybug's eyes widen catastrophically, but Adrien can't make out what she says because the blood in his brain is rushing too fast for him to hear. His vision is darkening far too quickly for his liking, and his pressured neck feels as though it's on the verge of crushing in on itself. His lungs scream in his chest, _begging_ for air, but no matter how much Adrien tries to breathe in, he can never deliver it.

Finally, Adrien feels the hands get ripped from his neck, but it's already too late.

He slumps to the ground, and the last sound he hears before he blacks out is Ladybug's terrified scream.

 **...**

"...drien! _Adrien!"_

Adrien feels someone shaking his shoulders. He painfully peels open his eyes, and he's momentarily blinded by the sunlight, but when his vision adjusts, he sees Ladybug kneeling by his side, her eyes wide with fear.

He feels his head pounding heavily, and he lets out a groan. "Ah, _fuck..."_

Ladybug gasps in surprise. "Adrien!"

Adrien coughs roughly, his neck burning with the ghost pain of his throat getting crushed. He gently prods his neck with his fingers, expecting to feel finger-shaped bruises or broken veins, but instead meeting perfectly healthy skin. Adrien looks up at Ladybug, ready to thank her, but his words disappear when he sees that she's crying.

He sits up. "Ladybug? What are you—"

She throws her arms around him before he can finish his sentence. "Adrien..." she sobs.

"What happened?" he asks frantically, quickly returning her hug. "A-are you hurt? You didn't have Chat Noir there to help you—"

"Who _cares_ about me?!" she cries incredulously. Her embrace grows tighter. "I didn't know—I didn't think he was going to—God, I thought you were _dead!"_

Adrien falls silent, realizing what has her so upset. He feels her body tremble as she sobs into his shoulder, and he tenderly pulls her closer, hoping he will somehow be able to soothe her. All he can do is hold her and wait for her crying to subside. His heart breaks to see her so scared because of him, but he can't help the feeling of warmth that spreads through his chest, knowing she cares so deeply for his safety. Knowing she cares _this much._

"I'm sorry," he whispers against her neck. She lets out another sob, and he closes his eyes. "It's okay. I'm okay. I'm here."

* * *

 **le 30 novembre**

Chat leaps into an alley seconds before his transformation dissipates. He catches Plagg in his shivering palms and quickly pulls out piece of cheese for the kwami to recharge with. Plagg doesn't bother trying to complain and stuffs his mouth, knowing that they can't afford to waste any time.

Adrien is used to fighting all kinds of akumas, but this battle is particularly brutal, considering the fact that they're fighting the literal Abominable Snowman. Two teenagers trying to fight a ten-foot rampaging ice monster that's trying to drown the city in snow is about as easy as it sounds. So far, the only somewhat progress they have made was evacuating the streets of any potential victims. Now, it's just two on one. Two on one giant, freezing mountain. Actually, _one_ on one giant, freezing mountain, because Adrien is stuck in this alley until Plagg fully recharges.

"Can you hurry?" Adrien pleads, his teeth chattering.

Plagg glares at him, his mouth full of cheese. He swallows. "I'm trying."

He hears a giant crash of snow, followed by Ladybug shouting. "Try faster."

All of a sudden, Adrien feels the ground rattle, and the temperature begin to drop. A large shadow washes over the alley. When he looks up, he sees the fanged, icy face of the Abominable Snowman growling down at him.

Adrien barely has time to shove Plagg back into his shirt before a giant snowball dives towards him.

The biting cold jars him. Adrien chokes as his nose and mouth fill with snow, and it only takes seconds for his entire body to lose feeling. Everything is black, empty, silent. The only thing he feels is cold cold cold cold _cold._

Fortunately, he isn't in there for long. Someone reaches through the snow and grasps his hand, and he feels himself begin to get dragged from the pile. When he reaches the surface, he coughs and splutters as his frozen lungs are granted with fresh air. His body shivers uncontrollably, and he feels someone grip the sides of his face with their gloved hands.

"Adrien!"

He cracks open his eyelids. His vision is blurry, but one look at the red and black blob looming over him and Adrien already knows who she is.

"L-Lady—" he coughs.

Ladybug cuts him off. "What are you _doing_ out here?!"

Adrien feels his body beginning to warm up. His shivering slowly calms down, and feeling returns to his fingers and toes. He lets out a shaky breath. "I—I'm fine. Go."

"No way," she snaps. "I'm not leaving you out here by yourself."

"You have to," he says. _'Leave so I can transform.'_

Ladybug looks around desperately, as if looking for someplace safe she can leave him. Her eyes fall on the Agreste Mansion a few blocks away, towering above the surrounding houses, and he sees the light bulb go off in her head. She picks up Adrien off the snow pile and holds him to herself with one arm while grasping her yo-yo with the other. "Hold on, Adrien."

Before he has the chance to object, Ladybug swings them off the ground, and Adrien has no choice but to cling to her as she catapults them over the roofs towards his house. When they get there, Ladybug hands the cold, wet Adrien off to a horrified Nathalie, and he can only watch helplessly from the assistant's grip as his partner flies off to battle the akuma without him. His heart sinks in his chest.

Nathalie isn't afraid to take extra measures of precaution. She orders Adrien to take a hot shower and get into bed, scolding him the entire time for being so reckless and telling him he could've died of hypothermia. Adrien takes it in stride, knowing Nathalie only yells when she's extremely frightened, but he begrudgingly does what she says, because he knows she won't leave him alone until he does.

Adrien is just walking out of the bathroom, freshly showered and reclothed in warm pajamas, when, through his windows, he sees the Miraculous Cure wash over the city. He wants to feel relief, knowing Ladybug was able to successfully defeat the akuma all by herself, but for some reason all he feels is a pit of trepidation.

After that, it doesn't take very long for the sun to set, and Adrien has no choice but to resign himself to his bed. He crawls under the covers, plops his head back against his pillow, and stares blankly at the ceiling, feeling anything but tired. Plagg is already asleep in his usual spot on the nightstand, bundled up in the blue scarf Adrien's father gave him for his birthday. For the first time in his life, Adrien envies the kwami; he wishes nothing more than to be able to sleep, just so he can shove down this feeling of apprehension that doesn't seem to want to _leave._

He sighs in defeat. Adrien rolls onto his side, settles back against his pillow, and pulls the covers up to his chin, trying to get as comfortable as possible. He's about to close his eyes and attempt to lull himself into slumber, when he suddenly hears someone tapping on his window.

Adrien's eye fly open. He sits up, tossing the covers off of his chest and pooling them around his waist. From here, he can see the outline of Ladybug waiting outside his window, silently asking to be let in. He kicks off the blankets, jams his feet into some slippers, and hides a still-sleeping Plagg in his drawer before crossing the room and throwing the window open.

Ladybug slips inside. Adrien shuts the window again, and when he turns to face her, she's shivering from the cold and refusing to meet his eyes. The trepidation Adrien felt earlier returns, only this time thrice as strong.

"Ladybug?" he asks quietly, concern laced in his voice.

For a moment, she doesn't move. Then, carefully, she raises her head. He realizes her pigtails have come undone, and now her loose hair is down past her shoulders in limp locks, wet from the melted snow. The right half of her face is veiled by her hair, but the visible half is shining with tears.

Adrien clenches his hand in a fist, then unclenches it. He slowly raises it to the veil of hair, his fingertips barely brushing the strands.

"Can I?" he whispers.

Ladybug cringes in dread, but she nods in consent. He gently slips his hand beneath the hair and sweeps it behind her ear, and when he finally sees her face, he feels as though his stomach is hit by a sack of bricks.

A huge, deep gash runs from the tip of Ladybug's right temple, all the way down to the side of her jaw. The flesh surrounding it is red and puffy, and her right eye is swollen shut. Despite being about an hour old, the cut still appears fresh, gaping and oozing red over her skin. Blood has smeared all over the side of her face, leaking all the way down to her neck.

"I—I didn't know where else to go," she whimpers, speaking for the first time since she arrived. "Chat didn't come back, and I can't go home, and I can't—" Her only functional blue eye is wide, pleading. "I can't let anyone else _see_ me like this—"

"Shh," he soothes, placing a hand on her shoulder. He can feel her shaking, and she's freezing to the touch, a result of staying out in the winter air for so long. A part of him is touched that _he_ was the first person she thought to come to, but the other part of him regrets that she had to come to him for this at all. He squeezes her shoulder, hoping to provide her with some comfort, and says, "Follow me."

Adrien leads her into his bathroom. He switches on the light and gestures for her to sit on the counter. She timidly heaves herself onto the countertop and draws her knees to her chest, and Adrien throws some fluffy clean towels over her shoulders to warm her up. He kneels in front of the cabinet under the sink and pulls out his first-aid kit before getting to his feet. He places the kit beside her on the counter and retrieves two clean rags and some disinfectant alcohol from its contents.

Ladybug curses under her breath when the disinfectant-soaked rag makes contact with her wound, and Adrien quickly apologizes. He spends a few minutes gently cleansing the wound before soaking the other rag with warm water and using it to wipe the blood from her face. This action is much more soothing, and he can see the tension leave Ladybug's shoulders. Her eye flickers shut.

"How did this happen?" Adrien asks softly, still wiping the blood from her face.

She's silent for a moment. She doesn't open her eye. "The Snowman snagged my face with his ice claw. I didn't see it coming."

Adrien pauses wiping. "How did you beat him?"

The ghost of a smile spreads over her lips. "My Lucky Charm was a flamethrower."

"...Well that's convenient."

She laughs weakly. "It sure was."

Adrien puts down the bloody rag and inspects her face. There's still some swelling on her skin, but it's clearly improved, and her right eye is now somewhat functional. Without all the blood staining her face, Adrien can now clearly see her cut. It isn't as deep as he initially believed it was, but it still needs to be bandaged.

He pulls out a roll of transparent skin tape and gauze. "I don't think you need stitches, but you do need to keep it covered."

She stares apprehensively at the gauze. "I can't wear that, it's too noticeable."

"Hey," he chides. "Don't you trust me?"

Ladybug frowns, but reluctantly leans forward to let him bandage her face. He measures the cut to see how much gauze he needs. Then he cuts the bandage until it's two centimeters wide, and he tapes it to her skin to hold it in place. He tucks her hair out from behind her ear and frames it over her cheek. "The swelling should go down by tomorrow," he tells her. "If you keep your hair down like this, it'll be hard for anyone to notice the cut but you."

She doesn't respond. Her glassy blue eyes stare at him in wonder, as if questioning how such an unfortunate situation could be resolved with such a simple solution. Her lips part, as if she's about to tell him something, but she's too overwhelmed to speak. "I... I..."

Adrien takes her hand. "I know," he says quietly.

Her eyes well up with tears. "How... how could I ever _repay_ you?"

"You don't have to do anything," he insists. After all, it's his fault she was left alone in the first place.

She wipes her eyes with the back of her knuckles. "You're too kind for your own good."

He shakes his head. "Helping you is the only reward I need."

Ladybug's face turns red. She sniffles. "Don't say that."

"It's true," he says quietly. He looks her in the eyes, and he feels his heart begin to pound against his ribs. "I care about you. A lot."

Her breath hitches. Ladybug stares down at him, her blue eyes surveying him in astonishment, as if she can't believe what she heard. "Really?" she breathes.

Adrien steps closer. Ladybug lowers her head. "I do," he whispers.

"I do, too," she says. Her face grows nearer. "I... care about you, Adrien."

"Well that's convenient," he mumbles.

Their noses brush. Adrien's eyelids begin to droop, and he can feel her warm breath against his lips. His heart is beating so fast he swears there's no way she can't hear it. He swallows thickly.

 **...**

She pulls away.

 **...**

Ladybug hops off the counter and removes the towels from the shoulders. She keeps her head bent towards the ground. "Thank you," is all she says.

Frozen in place, Adrien only watches as she exits the bathroom, walks into his room, and lets herself out through his window, leaving him all by himself.

He stands there for a very long time.

 **...**

After a while, Adrien flicks off the light, and sinks to the floor.

* * *

 **le 12 décembre**

Adrien ducks as a wad of bubblegum the size of a basketball soars over his head. The hallway is filled with the sound of students' screams, and the rapid pounding of sneakers against the ground, and the sticky 'splat's of gum trapping its victims. Next to him, he watches Kim meet this fate, and he starts to run a little faster.

Sticky Situation is an akumatized student who was forced to spend their detention scraping chewed gum off the bleachers in the gym, in preparation for the basketball game Adrien's team was going to participate in. Adrien had just finished changing into his uniform in the locker room when the screaming began, and before he had the chance to grab Plagg and transform, he got caught in the mob of his teammates, and he had no choice but to follow them out the door.

Now, everything is getting covered in gum, including the doors to any potential hiding spots. As he runs, Adrien searches desperately for a place to transform, but every door is glued shut.

Then he sees it—an ajar supply closet that has yet to be vandalized. He sighs in relief, thankful for the escape, but the relief quickly disappears when he realizes that Sticky Situation has fired another wad in his direction. Horrified, he tries to outrun the gum and reach the closet, but the wad gets closer and closer until—

"Look out!"

Adrien feels something crash into his back, and his feet fly out from under him. At first he thinks it's the gum, but this feels far too big and far too solid, and he feels someone wrapping their arms around him, and—oh—oh, _wait—_

The two of them tumble into the closet, just as the gum hits the door and seals it shut.

The closet is much more crowded than Adrien anticipated. The room is too dark for him to see, but he can't find any lightswitch. He feels at least ten different broom sticks digging into his back, a dirty towel is draped over his head, and his foot is stuck in an empty bucket. What's worse, Ladybug is cramped beside him, just as uncomfortable, and they barely have any room to move apart.

"We need to stop meeting like this," Adrien mumbles.

"I'll stop saving you once you stop getting into trouble," Ladybug snips.

He pulls the towel off his head. "It's not like I try to. I just have terrible luck." He tosses the towel to the side. He thinks it lands in another empty bucket. "Trouble naturally gravitates towards me."

Ladybug hums. "I guess it's a good thing you have me, then."

He raises an eyebrow jokingly. "Really? You crashed into me, what, six times now? I wouldn't really call that a good thing."

She immediately gets defensive. "Okay, I've only actually crashed into you _four_ times. And two of those times, I was saving your life! Including now!"

Adrien bursts out laughing.

Ladybug crosses her arms. "I _just_ saved your life, and this is how you repay me."

He shakes his head. "And now we're _stuck_ in here."

"You ungrateful, son of a—" Ladybug rattles the doorknob. It doesn't budge. "Okay, we're stuck." Adrien laughs harder. "Stop that!"

"Sorry—I'm sorry—" He bites his lip to stop laughing, but his face is stuck in a grin.

Ladybug huffs. "I thought you were supposed to be a nice guy."

"Hey, I _am_ a nice guy," he insists. "It's just—it's a little ironic, don't you think? That we keep meeting."

"The only civilian whose face I'm more tired of seeing is Chloé Bourgeois," she admits.

Adrien scowls. "And you called _me_ mean."

"Oh, suck it up, handsome boy."

Adrien feels his face heat up.

A loud crash is heard down the hall, interrupting their conversation. Ladybug flinches at the sound. "I need to get out of here," she says worriedly.

"Can't you use your Lucky Charm?" Adrien asks.

"I already used it." Suddenly, she lets out a horrified gasp of realization. "Oh. _Ohhh_ no."

"What's wrong?"

"I already used it," she repeats. "I already _used_ it!"

Adrien's eyes widen in comprehension. "Your miraculous."

As if on cue, the earrings in question beep and light up in the dark, showing only two spots left. Ladybug curses. "Oh, shit."

Adrien places a hand on her shoulder. "Let's stay calm," he says.

"Calm," Ladybug echoes, her voice shrill. She nods her head. "Right. Yes. Calm."

He puts his hands on the door and pushes, testing its strength. "Maybe if we work together, we can bust it open."

They try it. The two of them ram their shoulders into the door, kicking and pounding, but the gum has hardened like cement. Her earrings beep again, this time showing only one spot.

Ladybug stops punching. She collapses against the door and slowly slides down the floor. "Adrien," she says, her voice trembling. She sounds like she's about to cry. "Adrien, my transformation won't—I can't—"

Adrien kneels down next to her. "Ladybug. _Ladybug,"_ he says gently. "It's okay. I won't look."

Her eyes widen. "R-really?"

"Really," he confirms. "Don't you trust me?"

She doesn't reply for a moment. She exhales shakily. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."

In the remaining time and the limited space they have, Ladybug and Adrien readjust themselves so they're sitting back to back, Adrien staring at the door and Ladybug staring at the wall. Even though it's too dark for him to be able to see her identity, and therefore turning around is kind of pointless, he does it for _her_ sake, not his own. Adrien sees a pink burst of light and feels a weird surge of electricity against his back. He hears the soft whispering of another voice, which he assumes is her kwami—Tweety? Tickle? Something like that—and he feels Ladybug shift as she pulls out food for her kwami to eat.

Ladybug settles back. "It takes a few minutes for the earrings to recharge," she explains, evading the much more complex truth.

"That's okay," he replies.

They're both quiet for a moment as her kwami eats. Ladybug is the first to speak up. "Adrien?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you..." She pauses. "Do you remember the last time we saw each other?"

Adrien is silent. "Yes," he says softly.

She swallows. "...About... when I left, I..."

He closes his eyes. "Please, don't."

She doesn't.

 **...**

Fortunately, it only takes a few minutes for the kwami to recharge. He knows they're ready when he hears Ladybug softly say, "Spots on," followed by the flash and the weird surge. When the transformation is complete and he's sure it's safe to look, he turns back around to face her.

It's still too dark to see her clearly, but she sounds relieved. "Thanks for doing that," she says quietly.

His voice is sincere. "It's my pleasure," he tells her.

Ladybug stands, and Adrien follows. She pulls out her yo-yo, and her voice turns serious. "Now it's time to break out."

Ladybug tosses her yo-yo up in the air and calls out, "Lucky Charm!" There's another swirl of pink light, and he hears something heavy land in her hands. She runs her hand over the surface, and it doesn't seem to take her very long to identify it. She sounds surprised. "Oh, wow. This will work."

"What is it?" he asks.

She doesn't answer. "I think you should step back."

Adrien flattens himself against the opposite wall as much as he can. Ladybug raises the charm, and with one giant swing, brings it down on the door. The door explodes open, and Adrien has to shield his eyes at the sudden burst of daylight.

Ladybug turns back to face him, her giant red and black-spotted mallet resting on her shoulder. Her face is determined. "Stay here until the fight's over."

"Sure thing," he lies.

Once Ladybug finally departs, Plagg pops out of his shirt. He grins knowingly. "Well _that_ was something."

Adrien sighs. "Please, don't."

(He does anyway.)

* * *

 **le 21 décembre**

The night before the beginning of winter break, the lycée holds an annual Winter Dance for the students to party hard and celebrate the holidays before they all go on vacation. Apparently it's legendary, and by some work of fate, Adrien's schedule is free and he's allowed to attend. There's only one problem.

"A date?" he asks. "Can't I just go with you?"

"I'm flattered, dude, but I have a girlfriend to entertain," Nino says, taking a bite of his ham and cheese baguette. He winks at Alya across the table. She blows him a kiss. Marinette pretends to gag.

Adrien bites his lip, staring down at his green salad. "The dance is _tonight._ How am I supposed to find someone on such short notice?"

Nino claps him on the back. "Don't worry, man. I'm sure Chloé would drop her fancy date like a hot tamale if you asked her instead."

"Ha, ha," Adrien mumbles. "Do I _need_ a date? Can't I just go alone?"

"You'll stick out like a sore thumb," Nino informs him sadly. "And trust me, the experience is twenty times more fun if you have someone to hang out with."

Adrien moans and lays his head on the desk. "Do you really think Chloé will drop her date for me?"

His friend sighs. "I'm sorry man, I should have told you sooner. I forgot how hopelessly sheltered you are."

Adrien grumbles under his breath.

Alya perks up. _"Marinette_ is free!"

 _"Alya,"_ Marinette hisses.

Adrien lifts his head off the table. "Wait, really?"

"I thought you were going with Nathaniel again?" Nino asks.

Marinette's face turns red. She coughs. "He, um, he got sick. Had to cancel last minute."

"Oh, no, that's too bad—" Adrien starts.

"That's perfect!" Nino cries. "Last minute cancel equals last minute date!" He shakes Adrien's shoulder excitedly. _"Ask her!"_

Adrien blushes. _"Now?"_

"She's waiting," Alya sing-songs. She wheezes when Marinette violently jabs her elbow into her side.

Adrien clasps his hands. "You don't have to go with me if you don't want to, but I would really ap—"

"I'd love to!" she squeaks. She clears her throat. "I mean, of course. Anything for a friend."

He grins. "Great! Now we won't be alone!"

Her blush deepens, but her lips quirk in a smile. "Yeah. Great."

 **...**

It isn't so great.

Don't be fooled, the dance started out marvelously. Adrien was starstruck by the fairy lights and the upbeat pop music and the bountiful buffet table and the shiny dance floor and all of the colorful suits and dresses his classmates were adorned in. He was completely floored by how beautiful Marinette's bright pink, knee-length, strapless dress was, even more so when she bashfully told him she made it all by herself.

The two of them had arrived with Alya and Nino, but the couple quickly disappeared into the crowd to join the hype, leaving Adrien and Marinette to revel in each other's company. As the night went along, Marinette slowly seemed to open up more and more. They joined in on a few dances here and there, but mostly they just talked and laughed and enjoyed being together. He discovered that Marinette is smart and funny and _hopelessly_ kind, and Adrien understood what Nino meant when he said having a date made the experience twenty times better; there's something inexplicably significant about standing in a hot, crowded room full of lively people, and having one special person to stick by your side all night long.

But, as per usual whenever Adrien seems to be enjoying his life in any way, everything comes crashing down.

"I am Disco Ball!" the shiny akuma cries above the crowd. "And you will all _pay_ for making fun of my dancing!"

The crowd screams, and everyone begins to rush for the exits at once, causing them to get extremely backed up. The akuma goes around zapping students at random with his disco ball wand, and whoever gets hit begins to uncontrollably spout embarrassing dance moves. Adrien turns to his left, ready to grab his date and find her a place to hide, but the spot where Marinette stood seconds ago is now barren. His eyes dart around, but no matter how much he looks, the black curls and familiar pink dress are nowhere in sight.

Adrien wishes he could go search for her, if only to make sure she's safe, but he hasn't the time. More and more people are being subjected to a dancing doom, and the secondhand embarrassment of watching so many lycée students do the chicken at once is becoming unbearable.

Fortunately, Disco Ball is one of the simpler akumas that Paris' heroes have battled. Ladybug and Chat Noir are able to wrap up the battle and purify the akuma with little to no complications in the process. They barely have any time to do their routine fist bump before the students crowd around them in awe, crying their names and begging for autographs and pictures. As much as Chat wishes to humor them, he used his Cataclysm much earlier in the fight than Ladybug did her Lucky Charm, and his ring is down to its final paw print. With a salute to the crowd and a wink to His lady, he flees from the dance floor and detransforms under the buffet table.

Adrien slips Plagg into the pocket of his Gabriel™ blazer and crawls out from underneath the table. He gets to his feet and fixes his hair and makes sure to straighten his jacket so he doesn't look too frenzied. When he looks around the room to see if he can spot Marinette, all he can see is the crowd of enthusiastic people flocked around his partner.

As if sensing his gaze alone, Ladybug looks over her shoulder and locks eyes with him. Adrien sees a relieved smile spread over her lips, and she quickly squeezes out of the crowd so she can make her way towards him.

She stops in front of him. "I'm glad you're okay," she says.

He smiles. "I am, thanks to you."

"And Chat Noir," she adds.

His heart warms. "And Chat Noir," he agrees.

The loud music is turned back on in the place where it left off, and the students cheer. The lively song that was in the middle of playing when the akuma striked is at its end, and when it fades out, a slower song takes its place.

Ladybug looks at Adrien. Her radiant, blue, joy-filled eyes twinkle in the fairy lights, and he suddenly forgets how to breathe. He feels his heartbeat accelerate, and he grips the hem of his shirt with sweaty palms. He needs to do something about this.

"Do—do you, uh." He coughs. "Do you want to... dance?"

Ladybug blinks, processing what he said. "Me?"

There's no one else around to confuse her with. "Uh. Yes?"

Her cheeks blush. "Oh," she says breathlessly. She raises a hand to her beeping earring. "I... I don't have time..."

Adrien swallows. "It's okay," he says softly.

Her once happy eyes turn sad, and Adrien hates it because it's all his fault it disappeared. He wants to tell her that she doesn't need to feel bad, that it's not a big deal (she's rejected him before and it was just a simple question and he can _handle_ this) but then she steps closer to him. She lifts her arms, and at first he thinks she's going to hug him goodbye, but then they wrap over his shoulders and around his neck and before he knows it she drags him in for a kiss.

Ladybug comes down hard, and their lips collide in a kind of painful way, but Adrien is too busy adjusting to the fact that he's kissing Ladybug to let that override the pure, elated _bliss._ It takes a few seconds for the shock to wear off, but once it does, he quickly caves in, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her closer.

After around twenty seconds—not that he's counting—Ladybug is the first to pull away. Adrien's lips are throbbing and his head is spinning and his face is _on fire_ and he's never felt so many of his emotions activate in his head at the same time. Ladybug opens her eyes and stares at him, her lips parted and her cheeks also on fire and her blue eyes appearing to be equally as dazed.

His voice is barely audible. "Wow," is all he can think of to say.

"Wow," she agrees, her voice just as quiet.

The silent, emotion-filled look they share is interrupted when Ladybug's earrings beep, and they see she's down to her last spot. She slowly removes herself from his arms and steps back, before pulling out her yo-yo. She gives him one last breathless smile. "Goodnight, Adrien."

He watches her swing over the crowd and exit through the front door. The slow song dies out and is replaced by well-known upbeat song, and he hears the students scream in excitement.

Slowly, he raises a hand to his red lips.

He feels them spread into a smile.

 **...**

* * *

 **...**

 **I'm dividing this into two chapters because I didn't really feel like posting a _30,000 word one-shot,_ and this is a nice place to stop. I don't know when I'll post the second half, but it's already finished, so I probably won't wait too long.**

 **Anyway welcome to ladrien hell**

 ****Cross-posted on AO3 and Tumblr**

 ****Tumblr: chatnono**


	2. Part Two

**This used to be called 'Six Months' as a placeholder title**

 **Warning: blood, violence, fire, suggestive content**

 **Important: Things get frisky™ in this chapter—nothing explicit, just implied—so if that makes you uncomfortable, I put bolded skip/continue markers for you to skip that part and continue to the rest of this god forsaken story.**

 **Enjoy :^)**

 **Part Two**

* * *

 **le 28 décembre**

In hindsight, he shouldn't have been so surprised when he woke up the morning after the dance and discovered his phone to be exploding with text messages and notifications. Adrien Agreste, famous teenage model, and Ladybug, beloved heroine of Paris, kissed in a crowded room filled to the brim with nosy teenagers. There was _no way_ they'd gone unnoticed.

But to see so many pictures being shared across the internet, and to read the absurd tabloid article titles, and to see his and Ladybug's names trending on virtually every social media site on the internet, he can't help but feel like his privacy has been violated. Adrien isn't a stranger to the media, but to know that Ladybug has inevitably been dragged into this mess as well makes the whole thing feel far, far more catastrophic.

It was so bad, in fact, that his very own father came into his room to discuss it with him personally. Adrien had expected to be criticised or yelled at or lynched by his father with his own tie, but instead Gabriel just told him he needed to be 'more careful' when in public with his girlfriend. He'd said it in the same austere, disappointed tone as always, but the double meaning of the words was definitely not lost on his dumbfounded son.

Nino came to Adrien's house the day after, before he and his family left France to go on vacation. His reaction was mellow enough, after the several minutes of unstoppable laughter that was so strong he was almost on the brink of sobbing. Once he managed to regain the ability to speak, he gave a chagrined Adrien a high-five and told him he had _totally_ seen this coming, but also that Adrien only had to tell Nino as many details as he was comfortable with disclosing.

In contrast, Alya didn't stop calling him since the pictures were released, which wasn't all that surprising, but that didn't mean he was especially happy about it. The last thing Adrien's stress-level needed was to experience Alya Césaire's unadulterated wrath. He resigned to simply ignore her calls, and he did manage to hold out for a few days, until, ridden with guilt and high on the holiday spirit, he reluctantly picked up on Christmas. As soon as he clicked 'accept,' he heard a piercing, unintelligible scream, followed by a long flood of barely comprehensible shouting that could basically be summed up in _"what the actual fuck, Adrien,"_ and to be honest Adrien wasn't really sure how to answer.

Eventually, she was able to calm down and reiterate that she wasn't angry with him for 'dating Ladybug behind her back,' just _extremely_ surprised, and she told him he damn well owed her a detailed and rehearsed explanation the next time they saw each other. Adrien promised he would tell her everything after break, once he had the chance to actually _figure out_ what happened.

Because in reality, Adrien has no idea _why_ Ladybug decided to kiss him. Maybe it was a spur of the moment—the heated room, the glowing lights, the after-battle adrenaline—or maybe she wanted to make up for rejecting him. Maybe it was just all out of pity.

Or maybe, somewhere deep inside her, she really does like him.

...But that sounds too good to be true, so he doesn't hold his breath.

It's been an entire week since the events of the dance, and winter break is coming to a close. A part of Adrien is relieved that he didn't have to go back to school the days following the dance and experience the explosion of reactions his classmates would've most certainly had. But the other part of him regrets not getting it over with, because he _knows_ he's still going to receive that explosion, whether the news is a week old or not. Something like this does not simply get swept under the rug, especially not when obnoxious, judgemental teenagers are the ones who are supposed to do the sweeping.

Today, Adrien has an all-day holiday photo shoot, unfortunately outside in the cold, with a single well-anticipated lunch break halfway through. Adrien's body is numb and his smile is frozen to his face and he kind of just wants to crawl into his bed and savor what little of his vacation he has left. He doesn't think he's ever felt so relieved when the photographer finally calls time for lunch, and after a lot of begging and promising he won't get shot or abducted, Adrien is allowed to enter the nearest café, _without_ supervision. As soon as he opens the door, a blast of heat envelopes him and he doesn't hold back when he lets out a huge sigh of content.

He chooses a cozy seat next to the window, right beside the heater, and he pulls off his gloves and relaxes into his chair. He orders his lunch with a coffee, knowing that, to get through the rest of this day, he'll need all the extra energy caffeine can provide him. When the waiter comes around again to give him his meal, the scent that wafts from the hot dishes elicits a growl from his empty stomach, and once they're set in front of him it isn't long before he dives in.

Thirty minutes, a toasted baguette, and half a bowl of onion soup later, Adrien hears the bell above the door jingle, signalling that someone has entered the café. The restaurant is pretty busy at this time of day, so he brushes it off as another hungry customer and continues focussing on his food. But then he hears the chair across from him gently drag across the floor, followed by the creak of someone sitting down, and Adrien quickly raises his head.

"I can leave, if you want," Ladybug says nervously. She clasps her hands and twists them, her shoulders tense. Her blue eyes glitter in fear. "I swear I didn't know you were here from the start, I passed by the window as my civilian self and saw you sitting here and I just—I had to—"

"No, no, it's okay. You can stay here," Adrien accepts. He carefully places his spoon on the side of the table and moves the bowl beside it so there's nothing between them.

Ladybug glances apprehensively at the patrons at the surrounding tables. Many of them are staring at them with wide eyes, whispering and pointing and pulling out phones. She shrinks in her seat and covers her face with her hands in despair. "Oh god, I can't stop causing you trouble, can I?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the flash of a camera. He ignores them. "They aren't any problem. I'm used to people staring at me."

"But they're staring at you because of _me,"_ she groans, leaning forward in her chair and resting her elbows on the table. She removes her hands from her face to reveal it to be burning twice as red. "I—I'm _so sorry."_

"You don't have to—"

"But I do!" she says, raising her voice slightly, and somehow he feels like they've been in this position before. She goes on. "This past week has been all my fault. I never should have—"

"Kissed me?" he whispers.

Ladybug stops. Her eyes widen. "N-not that I didn't _want_ to kiss you! Because I did! And it wasn't..." Her head lowers. "...It wasn't bad."

That they can agree on. He feels the blood rush to his face.

Adrien's silent for a moment. He clears his throat. "So..." he begins slowly, "you... you _wanted_ to?"

She gives him an odd look. "Well, yes," she says. "I wouldn't have kissed you if I didn't want to do it."

He goes quiet again. "Why?" is all he asks.

 _"Why?"_ Ladybug repeats. She sits up straight and laughs sort of hysterically. "I mean, why _wouldn't_ I?"

Adrien blinks. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Ladybug bites her lip and shifts in her seat uncomfortably. "There's... a lot of reasons," she says vaguely.

He feels his hopes slowly descend. "What was it?" Guilt? Pity? An accident?

She purses her lips. "You don't want to know."

"I wouldn't ask if I didn't want answers," he points out, echoing her earlier phrase. He rubs his arm nervously. "Look, I—I won't be mad if it was an accident, or if you did it because you felt bad, or—"

"Wait, _what?"_ she asks.

Adrien looks up, shrinking into his chair. "It's okay if it wasn't real."

"Of course it was real!" she insists. "I would never kiss someone just to resolve some conflict within myself." Her face floods with hurt. "Do you really think so lowly of me?"

He panics. "No! No! I—no, _I_ think so lowly of _me."_

"...What?"

Adrien twists the hem of his shirt. "I'm sorry, I've just been having a hard time processing all of this. I mean, you kissed me, and—it was nice, but—" He pauses. His voice drops. "Was that all it was? A kiss?"

It takes a moment for her to digest his words. Once she does, she shakes her head. "I... no. _No_. It—it was so much _more_ than that, Adrien."

His brain tries to figure out what that means, but he can't figure it out. His voice is barely audible. "Why?" he asks again.

"Because it's _you!"_ she snaps. She grips her pigtails in frustration. "Because you're witty, and intelligent, and attractive, and the kindest, most genuine person I know, and you somehow won't stop giving me all these chances, even though I keep _messing up!"_

His brain short-circuits. Somehow, he figures out how to speak. "I... wait—do you _like_ me?"

 _"Yes!"_ she cries, and realizing how loud she was, she takes a deep breath. "I _like you,_ Adrien."

He's quiet. "...Oh."

"Oh," she repeats miserably, her face flushed. "Yeah. _Oh."_

Adrien looks down at his hands with wide eyes, his mind whirling. He supposes he should say something in return to her exasperated confession. He looks back up. "I like you, too."

Her already-red cheeks grow darker. "...Oh."

The two of them sit there silently for a minute, staring at each other in disbelief. Neither of them can believe this just happened.

Adrien clears his throat. He licks his lips. "So, um, what do we do now?"

Ladybug tugs on her hair instinctively. "I don't know. I never thought we'd get this far," she admits.

"Right." He taps his fingers on the table. "How about... a date?"

She blinks. "A date."

"A date," he confirms.

"Oh," she says again. She doesn't seem to be taking this very well. At first she seems really conflicted, and he thinks she's going to reject him until she says, "Okay. Yeah. A date."

The bell above the door jingles again, and the Gorilla steps into the café. His blue eyes land on Adrien's table. When they fall on Ladybug, they turn menacing.

She laughs nervously. "I don't think he likes me."

Adrien shakes his head. "It's his job. He's not supposed to like anyone." He flags over a waiter to give him the bill. "That's my cue to leave, anyway."

"Okay," she says, her voice a little upset. Then she remembers, "Wait, you never told me when our date is."

"Oh yeah," he says. He scratches the back of his head. "I'll need to check my schedule, but, um. I can text you?"

Ladybug looks down at her yo-yo. She pulls it out and slides it open. "I'm not really sure what the number for this thing is, so can I text you first?"

Adrien gives her his phone number and she types it in. A minute later, he feels his phone buzz. He pulls it out of his pocket and watches the screen light up.

 **Hey, it's LB! I can't wait for our date! :D**

He feels his face heat up. He glances up from his phone to see her meticulously tying her yo-yo back to her waist. When she's done, she looks up and gives him a timid smile.

"Text me?" she asks softly.

"I will," he replies.

Ladybug leans forward and presses her lips to his cheek. She draws away slowly and gives him a stunning smile. Adrien wants to grab her (gently) and kiss her (passionately) but he becomes jarringly aware that everyone in the café has completely abandoned any personal conversations in favor of watching him and Ladybug's interaction, and he supposes he can wait until they're out of the eye of the public to go any further.

Although, it doesn't really seem to matter, because when he returns home that night and goes on his computer, he sees that he and Ladybug are once again making the top headlines. _'Paris' Hottest Couple Goes On Romantic Daytime Date.'_ There's maybe a hundred different photos of him and Ladybug at the café, half of them being the moment she planted the kiss on his cheek.

Ladybug texts him a few minutes later to apologize for the ten billionth time, apparently receiving the news the same time he does. He tells her **It's srsly ok, please don't worry about it** , and in reply to her first text:

 **I can't wait for it, either :3**

* * *

 **le 31 décembre**

They decide they might as well go out on New Year's Eve, since it's so close and they're both free to spend the night how they please. Adrien formulates a plan in the back of his mind, and when Ladybug asks him what they're doing he tells her it's a surprise. Disgruntled, she tells him to pick her up outside Tom & Sabine's Boulangerie Patisserie at the designated time.

That's where Adrien's limo pulls up now, outside the bakery at 20h30, thirty minutes before their dinner reservations. True to her word, Ladybug is leaning against the stop sign in front of the building. Her blue eyes light up when she sees the familiar vehicle roll towards her.

And she's... beautiful.

Her kwami has redesigned the signature crime-fighting suit into an evening gown. The dress is the same shade of red, but the spots are missing. Her upper half is concealed by a black pea coat, and her dark, glossy hair is tied up in a bun by a red ribbon, small ringlets of hair framing her face. The mask is the only piece that remains the same.

The Gorilla opens the door for her, the intimidating look in his eyes softening softly when he sees her bright smile. She thanks him and picks up her skirt before stepping inside.

Ladybug slides in next to Adrien. "Hi," he says breathlessly.

She buckles her seatbelt and looks up, her eyes shining. "Hi," she returns, just as breathless.

The limo begins to drive forward, and Ladybug turns to him. _"Now_ can you tell me where we're going?" she asks.

"You'll see," he says vaguely, and he laughs when she groans impatiently. "It's not very far," he tries to assure her.

She scowls at his antics, but she relents to wait in silence.

It doesn't take very long at all. The limo drives up a block away from the Eiffel Tower, which is already flooding with people in anticipation for midnight. The Gorilla opens the door again, and Adrien holds out a hand to help her outside. Ladybug looks up at the tower, her red lips parting. Her blue eyes reflect the yellow glow of the lights.

"This is my favorite place," she sighs.

Adrien smiles. "C'mon. We have reservations."

She squeaks, and he has to fight not to laugh.

The 58 Tour Eiffel is a fancy, quiet, low-lighted restaurant on the top floor of the Eiffel Tower. Adrien has been here a number of times, but Ladybug mentions that she's never made it. A hostess, somewhat overwhelmed by the fact that they're assisting the famous couple, leads both of them to a window-side table for two. Outside below, they can see the Trocadéro beginning to crowd with people for the upcoming fireworks display.

When she sits down, Ladybug unbuttons her coat, slides it off her shoulders, and drapes it on the back of her chair, and his heart leaps into his throat when he spots the stark paleness of her bare arms. The collar of her dress goes up her neck just like her regular suit, but the sleeves cut off above the shoulders. Her waistline is wrapped in a black ribbon. Her back is bare.

She catches him staring. Her lips quirk in a smile. "How do I look?"

"Amazing," Adrien says, dazed.

Ladybug glares at him mockingly. "What, not 'beautiful?'"

"Well, of course," he remarks. "I assumed that was a given. But you haven't mentioned anything about my outfit yet."

Her eyes travel from his combed blond hair, down his black blazer, and land on his dark red shirt. "You look dashing," she joshes. "But it's not like I need to drown _you_ in compliments, Mr. Model."

Adrien has a brief flashback to Ladybug crying in his arms after he was almost killed by The Model. He changes the subject. "What are you hungry for?"

Ladybug's eyes flit through the menu. "Oh, god, I have no idea. There's too many choices."

"Take your time," he tells her. "We have all night to ourselves."

After they order and hand over the menus, the night goes by surprisingly fast. Since the place is so packed, their food takes awhile to get to them, but they're too busy talking to each other to mind. And when the meals arrive, looking almost too perfect to eat and smelling beyond appetizing to the hungry teenagers, they ignore it, too invested in their conversations. They laugh and tell stories and Ladybug flings food in his face and he flings it back and it's the best night Adrien has had in a long time.

Eventually they have to start eating before the food gets too cold, but they don't stop talking. They don't notice how long they've been speaking until ten minutes before midnight, when the people around them are becoming excited for the final countdown to the new year.

"This has been amazing," Ladybug says, reaching out her hand to hold his.

Adrien locks their hands together, and his skin tingles at the feeling of their bare hands touching for the first time. He raises her knuckles to his warm lips. "It's been my pleasure," he murmurs against her skin.

Familiarity flickers in her eyes at the gesture, but she pushes it down with a teasing, "We should have outings like this more often."

He hums. "Well, if you say so."

The end of the year approaches with the final countdown: _dix, neuf, huit, sept, six, cinq, quatre, trois, deux, un—_

"Bonne année!" the restaurant cheers, and screams from the streets can be heard as well. Couples around them share a kiss, and Adrien and Ladybug look at each other. Before she can open her mouth to ask, he covers it with his.

This kiss is much more gentle than the last one, but it's slower, deeper. He feels her melt into him, tilting her head and caressing the sides of his face with her hands, and when they have to pull away for air they do so very reluctantly. They place their foreheads together, their heavy breathing drowned out by the loud booms of the fireworks. Ladybug opens her blue eyes, and when they fall on his lips she can't help the laughter that bursts from her mouth.

Adrien raises a hand to his lips and wipes his lips. He inspects the red lipstick stain on his fingertips. "Oops..."

She covers her smudged lips with her hand, still giggling. He hasn't seen her smile and laugh so much in one day, and this rush of love he feels, knowing he makes her so happy...

It makes him feel as though he's falling in love with her all over again.

 **...**

They don't make it down the Eiffel Tower until 2h00 on New Year's Day, and by that time there's still a considerable amount of Parisians lingering on the streets. The biting, frozen air is a sharp contrast to the cozy ambiance of the restaurant, and Ladybug shudders from the cold.

Adrien rubs her shoulder, hoping to help warm her up. He smiles. "I hope we can do this again sometime," he whispers. He hasn't had a single dinner without feeling completely lonely in what feels like years, and he's so thankful to have been blessed by her company.

Ladybug rotates her head towards him. Her breath comes out in frosty air. "I'd like that," she agrees.

Adrien's phone buzzes, which he knows is the Gorilla replying that he's arrived. "Do you want a ride? My driver can take you home now. Or, at least, a few blocks away from your home."

She shakes her head. "It's all right. My destination isn't very far. I can just walk."

"Are you sure?" he asks. His voice grows nervous. "It's New Year's Eve in Paris. The streets aren't exactly the safest place to be right now."

Ladybug rolls her eyes. "Have you forgotten who you're talking to? I know how to handle a few drunks, on the off-chance I encounter any."

"I'll still worry," he laments.

She purses her lips, but her voice is understanding. "I promise I'll call you when I get home, okay?"

A part of Adrien wants to protest, but he knows he can't make her go with him. Another part of him wants to shadow her on her way home under the guise of Chat Noir, but he knows he can't do that, either. Suddenly recalling the item he put in his coat before he left, he reaches into his pocket, and when his fingers hit the familiar knitted fabric, he withdraws the blue scarf he got from his father. He reaches around her neck and bundles her up, even as she resists. When she looks down and sees the scarf more closely, her eyes widen with recognition.

"Here. If I can't take you home, at least take this to keep you warm on the way there," he pleads.

Her blue eyes swarm with gratitude and an emotion he can't identify. "I'll give it back to you when I see you again," she promises.

He shakes his head. "Don't worry about it. You can keep it."

Ladybug's head snaps up. She looks horrified. _"What?_ No! I can't take this from you."

Adrien stares at her, confused why she's so worked up. "It's seriously okay, Ladybug—"

"Isn't this important to you?" Her voice isn't angry, but it's definitely disapproving. Her hands grip the ends of the scarf. "No. I can't keep it."

It's true that the scarf is important to Adrien; it was the first genuine gift Adrien's received from his father in a very long time. But he doesn't need that kind of paternal reassurance, not anymore.

He gently grabs her hands and releases them from the scarf. "I don't need to hold onto some scarf to remind me of my father's love," he says quietly. "I have memories. I have his occasional approval, and his rare smiles. He's still there, in small ways..." He squeezes her hands. "But that doesn't matter. I have you. The only love I need, right now, is from _you."_

Ladybug's blue eyes shimmer. He thinks he sees them filling with tears, but before he can ask for sure she presses her mouth to his. She hangs onto his collar, drawing him closer, and he has to think quick to keep up with her voracity. After a blinding moment, she pulls away, and he pants in surprise. This time, he really does see tears in her eyes.

She pulls him into a hug and buries her face in his shoulder. "Thank you," she whispers against his jacket.

"No." Adrien wraps his arms around her tightly, and he holds her to his chest. "Thank _you."_

* * *

 **le 31 janvier**

Confronting his classmates after break went about as well as Adrien expected it to. Meaning: chaotically.

But, despite the ear-shattering screams and the fire-burning stares and the overall overwhelmingness of so much attention, he couldn't really find it in himself to care. He's heard all these jokes before, he can handle all their personal questions, and he can admit his true feelings, because none of it takes away from the fact that His Lady is finally _his_.

(Not that she _knows_ she's His Lady, of course.)

Alya drowns him in questions all day long— _"How did you meet? How long have you been friends? When did you start dating? And why did you never tell me?"_ —and Nino holds back from doing the same thing, just as he promised he would, but he's clearly curious for answers as well. Adrien answers the questions to the best of his ability, but sometimes he can't keep up, or is too tired to reply. She absorbs every response he gives, and he knows whatever comes out of his mouth now will most likely appear on the Ladyblog later, so he chooses his words as carefully as he can.

But, like it tends to happen with all trends, the hype dies down. It's still there, humming in the background, waiting for something new to reignite the excitement. But for now it remains static, and Adrien goes back to blending in as a normal classmate—at least, as much as he can blend in at this point.

By the end of the month, Adrien and Ladybug are somehow up to twelve dates. They've done everything from visiting museums, to taking boat rides on the Seine, to walking through the park, with Ladybug keeping his scarf pulled up to her nose to protect herself from the icy weather. And sometimes, they would just lay in Adrien's bedroom, kissing and snuggling and just breathing each other in, because sometimes all a couple needs to feel progressive is to be with each other.

That feeling he got all those weeks ago on their first date, when he felt like he was falling in love with her all over again, knocks him over him every single day, every minute he learns something new about her, every second he hears her laugh. He keeps falling, over and over again, and with every recurring impact, he feels himself sink deeper and deeper, and he doesn't think he'll ever be able to get out. Not that Adrien exactly minds.

As he gets to know Ladybug more, Adrien starts to notice little things about her that he feels like he's seen before, but he can't place where they come from or why. It leads him to wonder whether he knows her behind the mask or not, and that leads him back to yearning for the knowledge of her identity, and it results in a vicious cycle of wanting to respect her wishes while simultaneously just wanting to _know_. He wants to be able to lay beside her in _her_ bed in _her_ room and whisper _her_ name, and he wants to be able to look into those maskless blue eyes and see this girl for who she actually is.

But he's never asked her about her identity, and he isn't going to, at least not yet. Adrien used to be more comfortable asking her about it as Chat, but now that she has finally fallen for his civilian self, he realizes there's a risk. She might be angry that he kept it from her all this time, or she might accuse him of deceiving her, or she might reject him once again, claiming she could never be with the boy behind her partner's mask. A part of Adrien realizes how irrational these fears are, because he should have more faith that a girl with a heart as big as Ladybug's would have room to understand his secrecy, especially when she is equally as wary about disclosing her own identity. But he promises he'll tell her one day, and hopefully it will give her the courage to reveal herself as well.

Their thirteenth date is tonight, and Adrien supposes he should feel worried about this specific number. With such an extensive history of being blindsided by bad luck, he has every right to be superstitious. But things have been going so well lately that he's nearly forgotten what bad luck is even supposed to _feel_ like.

So, that night, when their date gets ambushed by a downpour of sleet, he shouldn't be feeling this surprised.

The two of them swing into his bedroom through the window. Ladybug places Adrien back on his feet and quickly closes his window, water cascading from her suit and onto the floor as she moves. She turns around to face him again, and he sees that her wet hair is glued to her shoulders, with little piece of ice still trapped in the tendrils. She smiles at him tiredly as she says, "Well _that_ was unexpected."

Adrien cringes at the feeling of his wet clothes rubbing against his skin. He peels off his coat, tosses it it on the coffee table, and squeezes out the hem of his shirt, despising the way the water slips through his fingers and splashes on the floor. Adrien frowns. "Somehow, it never crossed my mind to check the weather forecast."

Following his lead, Ladybug wraps her hands around one of her pigtails and squeezes the water out of her hair. "It didn't look like it was going to rain," she tries to assure him. "Don't worry about it."

Adrien turns on the light beside his bed, finally lighting up the darkened room. He goes over to the bathroom and pulls out a couple of fresh towels, then tosses one to her and takes the other for himself. "Well, either way, I'm still sorry for ruining our date."

She wraps the towel around her shoulders and gives him a small laugh. "I wouldn't call it _ruined."_

"You're right," he sighs. "'Destroyed' probably sums it up better."

Ladybug puts her hand on his shoulder, and at first he thinks she's going to say something comforting, but all she says is, "You shouldn't be so dramatic."

He grumbles at her grin and shrugs her hand off his shoulder. Adrien is about to sit down on the edge of his bed, but at the last second he realizes that, if he does that, he'll get his bedspread soaked. He stands up straight and wags his finger at her. "I'm just going to ignore you," he gestures his hand to his dripping attire, "and change out of these clothes."

She watches as he walks over to his dresser. "Should I be turning around?" she asks in a joking tone.

"It's your choice," he breezes, pulling open one of the drawers. He grips the bottom of his shirt and raises his arms over his head, peeling the wet article from his skin. He tosses it onto the ground, ignoring the wet 'plop' it creates when it makes contact with the floor, and he's pulling off his soggy shoes when he feels two hands slither around his waist.

Adrien jumps and yelps in surprise. Ladybug laughs under her breath, but she doesn't let him go. She rests her chin on his shoulder and readjusts her grip. "Your skin is so smooth," she compliments far too casually.

He recovers from the surprise. "What can I say? I'm a model in the flesh."

"Ha ha," she murmurs. She places her lips on the back of his bare shoulder, and Adrien suddenly forgets what breathing is. "It's also really cold," she notes softly, her lips still attached to his skin.

Adrien swallows thickly. It's hard for him to ignore how her hands are slowly travelling down to the waistband of his jeans. "Well..." he drawls, placing his hands on top of her and gently removing them from his waist. He turns around to face her, his heart pounding wildly but his mouth pulled into a smirk. He leans closer to whisper in her ear, "Maybe you can warm me up?"

As soon as the words leave his mouth, Ladybug's eyes widen catastrophically and the blood instantly rushes to her face. He doesn't think he's ever seen her this shocked, and for a second he thinks he's _broken_ her, but before he can start laughing she's already slamming her lips against his, and slamming _him_ down onto the mattress.

 ** _*skip*_**

Everything is a blur of motion. Ladybug rolls on top of him, her fingers locked in his wet hair. Somewhere along the way, Adrien loses both his socks and his jeans, leaving only his navy blue boxers to keep him decent. The whole time, she refuses to depart her mouth from his. (Not that he minds that.)

It isn't long before the two of them are out of breath, and Adrien doesn't have to worry about feeling cold anymore. They've never been so _invested_ in each other; her fingers rake over his back and his hands tug the ribbons out of her hair and no matter how hard they try, they can't seem to get _close_ enough. And he's finding it increasingly more difficult to allow her suit stand as an obstacle between them.

They pause for a moment to breathe. Ladybug pulls away gasping, her face flushed and her blue eyes alight with exhilaration. Her loose, disheveled hair begins falling in her face, and she tries to tuck it behind her ear, but it only lasts a few seconds before it falls out again.

"Adrien..." she whispers, and he knows. He hears it in the breathless, desperate, _pleading_ tone of her voice, and the burning look in her eyes is enough to complete the sentence:

 _I want you._

He blinks, but the look doesn't change. His heart has never raced this quickly before. "Are you sure?" he asks, his voice barely audible. He thinks he's shaking.

Ladybug stares at him for a moment, her breath heavy. She brings her mouth down on his briefly before quietly whispering, "Close your eyes."

Adrien does as she asks. He feels her lean over and reach for the wall, and he hears the light switch click off, leaving them in complete darkness. He hears her whisper something to herself, and after a familiar wave of electricity radiates from her body he realizes that she isn't transformed anymore. Adrien doesn't have any time to process the fact that Ladybug is in her civilian form before he feels her guiding his hands to the hem of her shirt, silently asking him to help her remove it.

Eventually, her clothes join Adrien's on the floor. He fumbles for her in the dark, not daring to open his eyes incase he accidentally sees her unmasked face. He kisses her passionately one last time before asking her for the millionth time, "Are you _really_ sure?"

Sensing his apprehension, Ladybug pulls back slightly. She sounds uncertain. "Do you—do _you_ not want to—?"

"I—no, of _course_ I want to," he insists, and then he clears his throat. "But... if _you_ don't, we won't. I really—"

Ladybug sighs, exasperated. "I appreciate that you're so thoughtful, Adrien, but _please shut up."_

Before he can ask her again, her lips crash back onto his.

 **...**

Adrien has never slept so well in his entire life.

Their first time—for _both_ of them—was... _crazy,_ for lack of better words. It was a mess of limbs and kissing and heat and 'ouch's and 'sorry's and embarrassed laughter. But then there was this moment where everything just... fell into place, and suddenly it was just _right_.

Afterwards, they both laid back against the pillows in exhaustion, wrapped in each other's arms and their legs tangled in the blankets, both their hearts still pounding frantically in rapture. They giggled tiredly and whispered to each other in the dark until they dozed off into a wondrously peaceful state of sleep that Adrien has only had the means to daydream about.

When he wakes up in the morning, she's gone.

Adrien sits up and yawns tiredly. He rubs his eyes and looks around the brightly sunlit room. His discarded clothes are by themselves on the floor, no longer entwined with hers, and the side of the bed she slept on the night before is now barren. All that remains in her place is a single green post-it note on her pillow. Before Adrien has the chance to read it, he's interrupted by Plagg's mocking chime of, "Well _someone_ had a nice rest."

He stiffens. Adrien glances over to his left, just in time to see Plagg sit idly on the opened condom wrapper on his nightstand.

Adrien snatches Plagg off the table, his face burning hot. The kwami begins cackling and Adrien growls in detest. "What's so funny?" he challenges.

Plagg's laughter dies down somewhat. "It's—it's your _face_. All you k-kittens get the _exact same_ look on your face."

He raises a hand to his cheek. He can feel the warmth radiating from it, and that makes him blush even harder. "W-we do?"

"There's no mistaking it," Plagg snickers. "It never gets old. And trust me, it is _old."_

Adrien knows he should probably be feeling self-conscious, but he knows this is Plagg's blasé way of trying to reassure him, so he takes it in stride. He places the kwami back on the nightstand— _away_ from the wrapper—and that's when he remembers the unread note that's still in his opposite hand. Adrien glances down at the light green square of paper that only contains a short message:

 ** _Dear Adrien 3,_**

 ** _Thank you for last night._**

Adrien feels his face burn all over again. His heart flutters in his chest at the sight of the small heart next to his name, and he feels his mouth break into an unstoppable smile.

In the corner, there's one last thing written so small that he almost misses it, but he catches it just in time:

 _ **Love, LB**_

 **...**

 ** _*continue*_**

Nino gives Adrien a strange look as he sits down beside him. Adrien puts down his bag, a small smile on his face, but he wipes it off when he notices his friend's stare. He cautiously sits up. "Is something wrong?"

He shakes his head. The look doesn't falter. "No," he drawls. "You look... different."

Adrien frowns. "Different?"

"A good kind of different," Nino clarifies. "I think. It's kind of like you're happier... but bigger... and. Glowing?"

Adrien stares at him. "You're losing me."

He sighs. "Forget I said anything."

The door opens, and when Adrien turns his head to see who it is, he sees Marinette slip into the classroom. She usually smiles at him in the morning (when she manages to make it to class on _time),_ but today, she keeps her eyes trained on her and Alya's desk, as if deliberately avoiding his gaze.

When she sits next to Alya, the other girl looks up from her phone. She gives Marinette a weird look. "You look different."

Marinette pauses shuffling through her backpack. She looks up, self-conscious. "What?"

Alya's eyes narrow. "You seem... I don't know... _older,_ I guess?"

Nino snaps his fingers. "That's it!" He turns to Adrien. "Older. You look _older_. Like, no idea why."

Hearing Nino's comment, Alya looks at Adrien as well. She shifts her gaze between him and Marinette, confused. "This is so weird. What's _up_ with you two?"

Marinette doesn't blush. She doesn't smile. She doesn't... anything. All she does is say one word, her eyes glued to her hands and her voice hardened in a way Adrien has never heard it before: "Don't."

Alya's teasing smile falls.

Marinette only opens her sketchbook and begins to furiously sketch, waiting for the bell to ring so she can use the lesson as a concrete excuse to ignore her friends.

Adrien remembers the first time he met Marinette, when she wrongly accused him of sticking gum on her seat, and how coldly she treated him until he finally talked to her and cleared up his intentions. That sickening, guilty feeling he got, not knowing the legitimate reason for her anger towards him, returns in this instant.

Feeling his gaze on her, Marinette looks up. Her normally animated blue eyes are now cold and dense. She stares at him for a moment, her eyes completely unreadable, before her head ducks back into her books.

* * *

 **le 7 février**

He hasn't heard from Ladybug since.

The last message he ever received from her was the note she left on his bed. After the first few days of no visits or no replies to his texts, he tries to brush off the worry. She might just be ill, or busy, or maybe she just forgot to check her messages. But when an entire week goes by, he can't help but feel that this lack of communication is a whole lot more intentional than he's letting himself believe.

He has no idea what to do. He has no way of contacting her besides through her yo-yo, and he can't talk to his friends about it. Well, technically he can, since he and Ladybug's relationship is not exactly a secret, but in order to get advice, he has to be able to state the problem. And Adrien doesn't really know what's wrong.

Is she mad at him? Upset?

Did he do something wrong?

Did he hurt her? Did she regret it? Did she not want to do it? She thanked him in the note, but what if she changed her mind?

 _What if she changed her mind?_

He doesn't think he's ever felt so terrible in his life, and that's _definitely_ saying something.

The only time he's ever seen her this week has been as Chat Noir, during patrol and akuma attacks. And she seemed to be healthy, but she definitely wasn't herself—she was quieter, more serious, and seemed to be even more task-focused than usual. Chat is notoriously known for being the more playful of the two, but usually Ladybug at least humors him. During yesterday's attack, throughout the duration of the battle, he doesn't think he heard her say a single word, or saw her glance in his direction, even once. Later that night during patrol, when she still refused to look him in the eye, he put his foot down.

"What's going on with you?" he asked, fighting to keep his voice level.

Ladybug still didn't look at him, but he could see her shoulders tense ever so slightly. Her voice sounded apologetic. "Nothing."

"Sure," he said, crossing his arms. "So why are you ignoring me?"

For a moment, she didn't move or speak. Chat felt the small dose of anger in his chest begin to boil, but it quickly stopped when she turned her face and revealed the tears leaking from her eyes.

He uncrossed his arms. "What happened?"

She ducked her face so it was again out of sight. She just shook her head.

Chat placed a consoling hand on her shoulder. "What is it? Did something happen? Did someone do something?" His voice cracked. "Is it that Agreste kid? Because I swear I'll beat him to the ground." He really will.

Ladybug didn't seem to appreciate the joke. She shrugged off his hand and stepped away. Her head was still bowed. "I..." She shook her head. "I have to go."

Before he had the chance to object, Ladybug swung off the roof and headed down the street. At first he thought she was going towards his house, but then she turned at the opposite corner, and disappeared from sight.

After that night, he adds one final question to the list:

 _Did she find out who he is?_

 **...**

In science, the class is supposed to work on a lab in assigned pairs. Ms. Lévêque barks out the names quickly, and somewhere in the middle Adrien catches his name linked with Marinette's.

The students begin to stand up to get with their group, and when Alya gets up to go sit with Mylène, Adrien slides into her seat beside his assigned partner. Marinette glances up at him in greeting, and quickly returns her focus to her paper.

Adrien remembers that Ladybug hasn't been the only person trying to avoid him in his life. Although Marinette hasn't been doing it so actively, she does it in little ways—avoiding eye contact, speaking to him in short, clipped sentences, tensing slightly whenever he gets near. He notices that she does it to the other teens as well, even to the now-worried Alya, but when it's with him, she seems up to put up a whole extra wall just to keep him the farthest away, and he has no idea why.

Marinette's hair is up in a ponytail instead of her traditional pigtails, and she's wearing a black shirt covered in little pink hearts. Her forehead is lined with stress and there are bags under her blue eyes, showing just how tired she was. She lets out a silent yawn and wipes a hand over her face.

"Are you feeling okay?" he asks quietly.

For the first time, Marinette looks at him— _really_ looks at him. She stares at him, and for a moment he doesn't think she's going to reply until she says, "Yeah, I'm... just tired."

These words aren't as cold as the others he's heard this week and he feels a little burst of victory in his chest.

They start working on the lab, and at first all of their conversation is strictly task-based, but Adrien treads into different topics and Marinette cautiously follows. He's glad that she's beginning to open up, but he can't help but mourn the conversations they had at the Winter Dance. It almost feels like that was years ago, rather than these few months.

When they finish the activity and start moving onto the questions, Marinette suddenly pauses. Feeling her gaze, Adrien looks up from his paper and stares at her questioningly. "Is something wrong?"

Marinette quickly looks back down. "No, it's nothing."

But he can tell something is still bothering her. "What is it? You can tell me anything."

She bites her lip. She doesn't look up from her paper. "It's just..." She swallows. "Can I... ask you something? Kind of personal?"

Adrien doesn't have any idea where this is going. "About what?"

Marinette fidgets. She taps her pen on the table, contemplating how to present her thoughts, before setting it down. "What do you think of Ladybug?"

Adrien blinks. "...Ladybug?"

"Ladybug," she repeats. Her voice is incredibly quiet. "What do you think of her? Like, _really_ think of her?"

"I..." Adrien isn't sure what kind of response she's looking for and his statement comes out sounding more like a question. "I think she's... great?"

"Do you really like her?" Marinette shoots. She looks up at him, her blue eyes swarming with something that looks an awful lot like desperation. "How could you like her, even though you don't know who she is? Even though she has all these secrets? Even though she might not be who you think she is?"

Adrien's lost on what she's talking about. And a little overwhelmed. He doesn't understand where this is coming from. "...What?"

Suddenly Marinette looks like she's going to cry, and Adrien feels an explosion of confusion and panic. He lifts a hand to place on her shoulder, his mind floundering for a way to prevent her tears, but before he can come up with anything, the fire alarms go off, halting all classroom activity.

The class is startled by the piercing noise, but it takes half a second for them to recognize the alarm. It isn't long before they leave their belongings at their desks and begin heading out the door, as per routine. By the time Adrien turns back to Marinette's seat, she's already made her way over to the door, and he has no other choice but to follow everyone's lead.

At first, nobody has any reason to believe it's not just a normal fire drill. The other classroom doors down the hall start opening, and their own occupants begin to spill into the hallway. Adrien weaves through the students and makes his way over to Nino, who bumps him in the shoulder and whispers something about it being awesome to get out of science class. But then they hear a chorus of screams followed by a loud, crackling rumble, and they realize that this is anything but a drill.

Adrien spins around in shock, searching for the source of the chaos. At the opposite end of the hall, he watches as a fireball careens around the corner and begins to engulf the hallway in flames. Before he can react for himself, Adrien feels Nino snag his arm and pull him down the stairs two at a time, alongside the rest of the panicking students. There's only one thing Adrien knows that can create a fireball like that, and where there's an akuma, there's—

Ladybug emerges from the burning hallway and flies over the heads of the crowd. She launches herself towards the doors and slams them open, revealing the sunny, smoke-free atmosphere of the outdoors. She waves her hands and calls out to the crowd, "Hurry! Hurry! Come on!"

The students sprint through the doors to freedom. Adrien's arm slips from Nino's grip, and for a second he panics about being separated from his best friend, but then he realizes this is his opportunity to hide and transform. He slinks towards the leftward side of the crowd to try to escape from the maze of frenetic students, and when he finally breaks free from the rush, he runs around the corner and dives into an empty classroom, his heart beating frantically in his chest.

Adrien sighs and leans against one of the desks, attempting to catch his breath. He remembers that he can't afford to waste any time, and he's about to take out Plagg and transform into Chat Noir, but then the hallway is struck by a fireball. The whole classroom shakes violently, and Adrien barely has time to brace himself before he gets knocked to the ground by a broken ceiling beam.

A rush of pain shoots up his left leg. Head throbbing, Adrien slowly looks up, and he sees that the entire front wall of the classroom is beginning to be eaten away by flames. His eyes widen and he quickly tries to scramble back onto his feet, but when he tries to move his leg, trapped by the beam, screams in pain. The room is quickly filling with smoke and the fire is growing too much and there isn't enough time for him to escape in this state.

The fire is closing in on him. The rest of the walls are quickly devoured by the inferno, and all Adrien can see through his teary eyes is a sinister, burning orange. The floor is scalding to the touch and somewhere in the commotion of flames, the beam trapping his leg caught fire as well. When he tries to breathe, his lungs fill with smoke, and he lets out a hacking, painful cough. His heart is pounding too fast and it's too hot in here and he can't breathe and _he's going to get burned alive._

 _"Adrien?!"_

At the sound of someone calling his name, Adrien dazedly looks up. Ladybug, his lord and savior, surfaces from the labyrinth of flames, her eyes wide and her yo-yo spinning in her hand. It doesn't take her long to spot him, and when she does, she lets out a cry mixed with panic and relief and skids over to him. She kneels at his side. "Can you get up?" she asks, her voice shaking.

He grits his teeth in pain. He can only shake his head in response.

Ladybug looks at the flaming beam. She quickly grips the splintered, unburnt end, and lifts it up so Adrien can pull his legs out from beneath it. His left leg received the vast majority of the damage, and he can see that the smoldering wood has burned through his jeans and scorched his shin, which is now red and blistered and bleeding. He feels himself trembling.

Ladybug hooks her arms beneath his and hoists him to his feet. Adrien tries to place weight on the damaged leg, but when it instantly floods with pain, he takes it off the ground and leans against Ladybug for extra support. The heroine wordlessly lifts him off his feet completely and begins making her way back through the flames. Adrien squeezes his eyes shut and grips her tightly, praying the two of them will get out of the building without becoming any more harmed.

He feels the burst of cool air before he sees it. When Adrien opens his eyes, he almost cries in relief at the sight of the bright sky and the firetrucks and the mass of students standing on the sidewalk, a little disheveled but besides that, sans injury.

Adrien quickly gets handed off to a team of paramedics. Without so much as a glance, Ladybug spins around and rushes back towards the school to fight the akuma. He tries to call out to her, but when he opens his mouth all that comes out is a series of coughs. All he can do is watch her swing back into the burning building, without her partner to have her back.

The paramedics shove an oxygen mask on his face and cut off another few inches from the left leg of his pants. They try to unzip and take off his sweatshirt, but Adrien remembers that Plagg is still in the pocket and he grips onto it tightly. They try to protest a little more, but knowing his leg should be first priority, they eventually let him keep it.

Nino and Alya find him at the ambulance. When they first see him, covered in ashes, smelling like smoke, his leg heavily bandaged, and an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose, Nino starts crying and Alya begins yelling at him for being so stupid for running _towards_ the danger rather than _away_ from it, and _what the hell was he thinking exactly?_ And then they both squeeze him in a bone-crushing embrace and refuse to let him go until the paramedics literally have to pull them off of him.

"Have you seen Mari?" Alya asks him, smiling sheepishly at the paramedic who throws her a wary look.

Adrien momentarily removes the mask. "You... haven't seen her?"

Nino shakes his head. He's stopped crying, but he isn't daring to move even an inch away from his best friend. "No. She might've just gone home along with most of the students, but we tried texting her and she hasn't answered."

Adrien glances at the school. The last time he saw Marinette, she was leaving the classroom. He has no way of knowing whether she made it out of the school...

"Then again, she hasn't been answering a lot of my texts," Alya says bitterly. She doesn't seem all that worried about her best friend's absence and seems all the more concerned with how Marinette has been behaving. She continues, "She's been so salty lately, for no apparent reason. I have no idea what's up with her."

"I'm sure she'll come around," Nino tries to assure her. Before he can back up his statement, a flood of pink ladybugs swarm through the inside and outside of the building, putting out every last trace of fire and restoring the school back to it's former glory. The ladybugs wash over the crowd and cleanse them of any smoke or ashes, and when they surround Adrien he feels the weight of his pain completely disappear. His jeans get magically repaired, and when he rolls them up his left leg, he's happily greeted with bare, burn-free skin.

The crowd erupts in cheers. Adrien takes off the oxygen mask, his lungs able to breathe on their own once again, and he thanks the paramedics for their service. Alya and Nino help him down from the ambulance, and he's readjusting to putting weight on his newly-healed leg when Ladybug stumbles through the front doors, followed by a chagrined upperclassman Adrien doesn't recognize. The people cheer again, and Ladybug smiles at them as she walks down the steps, but before he can rejoice, Adrien can tell there's something wrong, even from his place at the back of the crowd.

Adrien, Alya and Nino work their way through the mass of people and materialize at the surface, just as Ladybug reaches the end of the staircase. She's still covered in soot, and Adrien briefly remembers how the Miraculous Cure doesn't work on transformed heroes. Her legs are shaking and for some reason, her arm is wrapped tightly around her abdomen. Her eyes sweep tiredly over the crowd of saved people before they finally land on Adrien. He sees that they're filled with tears.

He wants her to say something. He wants her to scream at him for being stupid like Alya did, or sob in relief like Nino. He wants her to tell him why she hasn't been talking to him and he wants her to tell him what he can do to fix that. He wants her to talk and feel and do something other than... _whatever_ this is supposed to be, because right now he feels like she's so, so far away, even though she's standing right in front of him.

Instead, Ladybug rips her eyes from his, and pulls out her yo-yo.

 **...**

He doesn't watch her leave.

* * *

 **le 14 février**

Marinette is absent for a whole week.

The night after the fire, the girl in question sent Alya a brief text explaining that she went directly home after the teachers dismissed them, and that she's perfectly safe. Unfortunately, she also seemed to have contracted a bad case of the flu, and she lamented that she won't be able to attend school for a while.

Despite going to her house every day to drop off homework, notes, and classwork, Alya hasn't seen her best friend's face even once. Mrs. Cheng informed her that Marinette hasn't been accepting visitors because she doesn't want to be responsible for getting them sick as well, and Alya texted her a few times to ask her how she's doing, but the only replies she receives are vague and only a few words long, at the most. In the end Alya gives her a break, knowing she isn't feeling well, but her concern doesn't dissipate.

It feels kind of weird without having Marinette around for such a prolonged period of time. Her presence was one of those things that was often felt more than seen, even though she did tend to stand up to Chloé more than the average student. But it's the little things, like the feeling of her overshadowing his desk from behind him, or the sound of her tapping her pen on her desk top, or the occasional notebook tumbling off the desk and falling under his chair, requiring him to bend down and redistribute it to her embarrassed hands. It's her laughing loudly with Alya in the hallway, or her small, clever contributions to group conversations, or the smile she used to give him every morning that has been missing for even longer than this one week.

He misses her.

And, what's worse, Marinette isn't the _only_ important person in his life that's gone MIA.

Adrien wishes he could stop thinking about her. Clearly, she doesn't want to see him, for whatever reason, but he knows it's inadvertently his fault. He just wants to know what he did wrong. Doesn't she owe him that much? An explanation?

It doesn't matter. At this rate, when the only time she spoke to him within a span of two weeks was when he was just about to die, he knows he won't get one. He has no choice but to move on without closure, but maybe he can fool himself into thinking it won't be too bad. After all, he did it with his mother, no matter how painful it was, so he should be able to do it with the love of his life, right? And unlike his mother, who he still holds deeply in his heart, he can just shove Ladybug away, remove her from his life, from his memories. She was the one who threw him away, so it's only fair that he's allowed to do that to her.

But god knows he'll never be able to. She's still Ladybug—she's still the face of Paris, and his crime-fighting partner, and the girl that's stolen his heart. He won't be able to escape from her company, even though she's expertly managed to escape from his. Every time someone mentions her name, or he sees a picture of her around the city, or every time he even _thinks_ of her, it feels as though a knife gets thrust into his chest. The memory of her haunts him every day, the ghost of somebody he unintentionally scared away. He feels like he's trapped in some horrible nightmare, and all he wants is to wake up back in her arms.

God knows he'll never be able to.

It's Valentine's Day. Adrien is bitter to admit that the City of Love is living up to its name. All around him, Paris is beaming with red and pink lights, heart-shaped cut-outs taped to the windows, and advertisements claiming they have the 'perfect gifts for your valentine.' At school, Adrien suffocates in the overwhelming presence of boxes of chocolates, bouquets of roses, and over-stuffed teddy bears holding red heart-shaped pillows. He sees at least three different couples kissing every time he blinks, and since Alya and Nino seem to have caught the Love Fever as well, the romance quite literally follows him around all day.

Whenever someone invadingly asks him whether he and Ladybug have plans for tonight, he doesn't reply.

It seems to take forever, but eventually, the glorious sound of the dismissal bell rings throughout the school. Adrien is the first student to leave the building, and when he's finally sheltered in the backseat of his limo, he doesn't think he's ever been more happy to see the Gorilla's stoic, non-lovesick expression.

Fortunately, the only activity that awaits him after school is a piano lesson, leaving Adrien to have the majority of his afternoon to himself. Once the lesson is over, he completes his homework, finishes another lonely dinner, and locks himself in his room and collapses on his bed, all before 18h00. Plagg zips out of his pocket and sits down on the nightstand, silent for once in his life.

Adrien stares up at the ceiling. The sun is beginning to set, and the sunlight reflecting off his ceiling is transitioning from bright yellow to a mixture of orange and pink. For a second, the innocent sunlight turns into loud, burning flames, devouring his room and preparing to capture him as well, but when he blinks, the light is back to normal. Adrien scratches his left leg.

"Are you just going to lay here all night?" Plagg eventually asks, apparently fed up with watching his charge lay motionlessly on the bed.

"Probably," Adrien says honestly.

Plagg purses his lips. "Aren't you going to change clothes?"

"No."

"Take a shower?"

"No."

"Play video games?"

"No."

"Watch TV?"

"No."

"Sleep?"

"No."

Plagg crosses his arms. He flies off the nightstand. "Can you say anything besides 'no?'"

Adrien rolls over on his side to face the kwami. "Probably."

He throws up his hands. "So that's it," he says, and it's a statement rather than a question. "You're just going to lay here and do nothing."

"Pretty much."

Plagg groans. "Look, I don't care what you do. You can cry, or scream, or break a window, for all I care. Just— _do_ something." He jabs his paw in Adrien's cheek. "'Cause I know you're bummed out, but you're bumming me out too and that's not fair."

Adrien looks into Plagg's annoyed eyes. As much as he doesn't want to listen to _Plagg_ of all people, he knows, deep down, that the kwami has really been worried for him this past week. He catches it in the way Plagg seems to pay more attention to him, when his stare lingers on the back of Adrien's head when he thinks the teen isn't looking.

He sighs, but eventually, Adrien sits up. "You're right," he admits. "I shouldn't spend my Valentine's Day like this. God knows how many I have left."

Plagg's face lightens up. "That's the spirit."

Adrien slides off the bed and slips off today's clothes in favor of a clean t-shirt and sweatpants. He washes his face and brushes his teeth before pulling the covers off his bed and dragging them over to the couch. Once he's wrapped up in the nest of blankets, Adrien settles Plagg on the coffee table and picks up the remote.

The television switches on to the TVi News channel, which Adrien recalls is the channel he was last watching. Not in the mood to watch the news, Adrien hovers his thumb over the keypad on the remote, but the footage of large piles of trash flying across the screen forces him to halt. Nadja Chamack's reporter voice narrates in the background. Adrien only catches a snippet of her speech:

"...akuma that calls itself 'The Litterbug' is wreaking havoc down here at the Pont des Arts. Either of Paris' heroes have yet to make an appearance..."

Plagg throws Adrien a knowing look. At the realization that he'll have to depart from his cocoon of comfort and fight an akuma that will probably result in him getting dunked with piles of rotting sewage, Adrien suddenly feels the urge to burst into tears.

Seeing how upset he is, for the first time in the duration Adrien has known him, Plagg looks genuinely sympathetic. His ears flatten against his head. "Adrien—"

The hero just shakes his head. He shuts off the TV. "Let's just get this over with."

 **...**

The good news is, Chat Noir is able to lure Litterbug out of the water and away from the bridge before it collapses, and he managed to avoid getting pelted by garbage in the process. The bad news is, the Louvre is now sitting under a pile of steaming trash, and as Litterbug barrels on through the streets of Paris, he realizes in horror that the rest of the city will end up the same way if he doesn't do anything to halt the akuma's rampage.

And to top it all off? Ladybug has yet to show up.

The last thing he wants to do right now is fret over the girl that's already occupied the majority of his thoughts for the past two weeks, but he doesn't have a choice. Even if he does manage to tie up Litterbug by himself and release the akuma from the object, he won't be able to purify it, nor will he be able to cleanse the city of the disgusting piles of waste. Without Ladybug's magic to put everything back to normal, Paris can't truly be saved.

She's been late to akuma battles before, but the sun has been set for at least two hours now, and this akuma has been terrorizing the city for even longer. If she hasn't showed up now, it's very unlikely that she'll ever show up at all.

He's all alone. He can't do this on his own.

So when he catches a flash of red out of the corner of his eye, Chat whips his head in that direction. But instead of being blessed by his partner's entrance, he comes face to face with himself—his civilian self—on a billboard, surrounded by a ring of red emoji hearts to go along with the Valentine's Day theme. The model grin on Adrien's photographed face glares at him mockingly, and for a moment, he becomes completely overwhelmed with _rage—_ with frustration and confusion and heartache and everything he's been shoving down for the past two weeks—until he remembers two seconds too late that he's not alone.

The ton of garbage slams into Chat before he has the chance to turn his head. Chat gets knocked off his feet and is catapulted through the air at a potent speed, and when he feels himself beginning to descend, he tries to brace himself for impact, but the roof of the house is coming up to meet him too fast—

Chat slams through the trapdoor of the ceiling, cracking it off its hinges. He barely has half a second to careen away from the body curled up on one side of the bed, and in his attempt he ends up slamming his face into the wall.

The mattress jumps wildly when Chat lands, effectively jostling awake the bed's owner. Chat hisses in pain at the throbbing both in his splintered back and his bruised face, and the person beside him, realizing they're no longer alone, lets out a scream.

Chat's eyes widen. He quickly turns to face the girl and waves his hands frantically. "No, no! Please don't scream! It's just Chat Noir, I didn't—"

The girl turns on a small lamp that sits on a shelf next to his head. Chat recoils at the sudden brightness, but he finds himself staring back at the terrified face of—

"Marinette?!"

Said girl's expression slowly transitions from terrified to disbelieving. "Chat Noir?!" she replies, equally as shocked.

Chat's mouth falls open, unable to respond. He can only seem to stare at her black tank top and her messy, loose hair and her bloodshot blue eyes. She doesn't exactly look like she's ill with the flu, but she definitely doesn't look okay. He thinks he sees dried tear tracks on her cheeks, but she snaps her fingers in his face, drawing his eyes away.

"Did you hit your head when you fell?" she grumbles, throwing him a glare.

He scratches the back of his sore head sheepishly. "Sorry, I just—wasn't expecting to see _you,_ Princess."

Marinette rolls her eyes, but her glare softens somewhat. "I wasn't exactly expecting to see you, either," she retaliates.

"I'm sorry, I didn't intrude willingly," he apologizes. "I took my eyes off an akuma for one second, and he... threw me. Into your roof."

Her glare melts from annoyed to concerned. "An akuma?"

Thinking she's worried about the akuma attacking the city, he tries to reassure her. "Don't worry," he says. "It's nothing Ladybug and I can't handle."

Marinette sighs and falls back against her pillow, appearing to be conflicted for some reason. "I have faith in you," she encourages him, the tone of her voice void of anything that might sound encouraging.

Chat stares at her for a moment, wondering worriedly why she has this underlying aura of unshakable sadness, before he remembers that there's still an akuma he needs to contain. He stands up, careful not to rock the bed too much, and he searches the ground for his staff. He's 78% sure he was still holding it when he crashed through her roof, but just when he's starting to think it's lost in the dark streets of Paris, Marinette digs it out from beneath her back and tosses it back up to him. Chat looks down at her to thank her, but when his eyes land on her stomach, he notices something... isn't right.

When she laid down, Marinette's shirt had ridden up her abdomen. It's a small detail, and normally his eyes shouldn't be lingering on the exposed stomach of his friend, but instead of being greeted by bare flesh, he's greeted by a bulk of bandages wrapped around her torso.

The staff slips from Chat's claws and bounces on the bed, and Marinette looks up at him in question. Wondering what he's staring at, she follows his gaze, and when her eyes land on the stark white of the now-visible bandages, she shoots up and pulls the hem of her shirt back down.

(He briefly recalls how Ladybug had been caressing her abdomen in the same exact place after she emerged from the school.)

Chat sits back down on the bed. "What happened?" he asks, his voice strained.

Marinette's arms curl around her stomach. She doesn't meet Chat's eyes. "Nothing. I just—fell down the stairs. Got a bad bruise."

"That looks like more than a bad bruise," Chat says, concerned.

"Well, it is," she snips, her voice turning angry. "And, frankly, it's none of your business, so can you _just—"_

"I know you haven't been feeling well lately," Chat says, and he's not sure what he's doing. He thinks he should probably stop talking around now. He doesn't. "I mean, I know Alya has been worried about you. She... mentioned that you've been quiet lately. Moody. Just, not yourself." This isn't going well. "I don't know, it's really not my busi—"

Marinette hiccups. Chat cuts off his recant and looks down to see tears forming in her eyes.

He kneels down beside her, his heart drumming worriedly. "Marinette?"

"I can't do this anymore," she says in a watery voice, and then the tears are falling out of her eyes and rolling down her cheeks and her shoulders are shaking and Chat is at a complete loss of what is happening. "I'm sick of lying to my friends, my parents, my Adrien, my— _you."_

Chat stares at her. "Lying to... me?" Since when was he hers?

Since when was _Adrien_ hers?

Marinette sniffles. She puts her hands over her eyes, as if that will hide the tears leaking from them. Her voice comes out soft and muffled, but he can hear the unmistakeable admission:

"I'm Ladybug."

 **...**

Chat opens his mouth. Then shuts it. Then opens it. Then: "...What?"

Marinette wipes her eyes. She falls back against her pillow, as if those two words had drained all of the energy out of her, which they probably had. This time when she says it, it's small and tired and sad, and it's nothing like he's imagined it would be; this earth-shattering moment he's fantasized about for so long is nothing but heart-shattering. "I'm Ladybug. Your partner. 'The face of Paris.'"

He opens his mouth again, not exactly sure what to say. A part of him wants to say 'Really?' or 'Are you sure?' but the loudest, best part of him is screaming, _'Of course.'_

 _'Of course it's her. It's so obvious. **Of course she's the one.'**_

She laughs, but it's fake, empty, broken. "God, I'm so pathetic."

"You're not," he says automatically. His voice sounds hollow and distant, like it's not actually him, and for a second he doesn't think he said anything at all.

But she shakes her head. "I am. I'm a coward. I've hid my identity from the people I trust and I've hurt so many people I care so deeply about and I—" Her voice wavers, and she gasps out a sob. "I hurt _Adrien."_

The way he says her name sends chills down Chat's spine, but not the good kind, like when her fingers travel his back or her lips graze his neck. These are deep shards of ice that break through his back and tear apart his vertebrae. He speaks through the pain. "What did you do?"

"I left him in the dark," she says, each syllable quivering with sadness. "At first I thought I could do it, you know? I finally convinced myself it would be okay. I could be his friend during the day and his girlfriend at night..." She shakes her head. "But I couldn't, I—every time I saw him, I felt like I was lying to him. Every kiss, every hug, every flirt, it was a lie, lie, lie." Fresh tears roll down her cheeks. "I couldn't take it anymore. He's too good, too kind, too loving, and he's—he loves me with all his heart, and it hurts so much, because it's not Marinette. It's not _me_.

"Ladybug and I... we're so _different_. She's loud, and powerful, and brave, and brilliant, and I'm just... I'm just _not."_ Marinette scrubs hurriedly at her face. "And how... how could he stand to love me when she's the one with all the glory? When _she's_ the one he fell for?" The misery in her voice slowly saturates with malice. "When I've been in front of him every day for a whole year, when I've tried and tried again to get his attention, when I poured so much effort into working up the gall to ask him out, Ladybug just _had_ to sweep into Marinette's spotlight and _take him away."_

Marinette tugs a tissue out of a nearly empty box and blows her nose. Chat watches numbly as she crumples it up and tosses it in her trash can. She runs a hand through her tangled hair, and her extinguished blue eyes stare up at the ceiling, lost. "I should've never led him on," she whispers. "I knew it was a bad idea, I never, never..."

"Mari," he chokes out, somehow finding his voice amongst the deafening rattling of Marinette's words in his brain. "It's—it's _you."_

She looks up at him in question, eyes shining.

"It's you," he repeats, and then, "I can't believe... Oh my god." He lets out a surprised laugh, but it's a good surprise. It's an amazing surprise. The _best_ surprise. _"It's you."_

Marinette's mouth curls into a smile. It's small and weak, but it's there. "I guess it is."

He opens his mouth. He has to tell her that it isn't true, that everything she thinks isn't true, that her fears have warped her thoughts into terrible things that _aren't true._

But there's still an akuma.

"Marinette," he says, putting his hands on her shoulders. "This is such a bad time, but I—I _really_ have to fight the akuma. But I'll be back, okay? Just—go to the roof and wait for me. We'll talk this through and figure this out and—" He stands up. "Just, hold on."

Marinette stares at him for a moment before nodding her okay. Chat stands up and looks at her one last time, before hoisting himself through the roof, and shooting off.

 _'Hold on, Mari.'_

 **...**

With such a good reason to wrap up the fight quickly, Chat defeats Litterbug in twenty minutes flat, without any help. To an onlooker, the fight might've looked amazingly impressive, but Chat was only moving on autopilot as his brain continued and struggled to process that _it'sherit'sherit'sherit'sher._

Marinette is Ladybug. _Marinette_ is Ladybug. _Ladybug_ is Marinette.

 _Marinette is Ladybug._

The girl he's been fawning over, pining over, dreaming over for so long, the girl he's kissed and hugged and fought with and laughed with and _loved,_ has been standing right in front of him this entire time. Has been _crushing_ over him.

Marinette, the cute girl with the pigtails and the blue eyes and the bright smile and the even brighter spirit. Marinette, the girl who stands up to bullies and stands with those in need. Marinette, the girl with so much blinding creativity and originality that even his _father_ picked her out from a crowd. Marinette Marinette Marinette Marinette Marinette.

Marinette, who could wear that Ladybug mask and say Ladybug's phrases and swing Ladybug's yo-yo, and still be Marinette. Marinette, who could take off that mask and slip back into her civilian life, and still be Ladybug.

The two are interchangeable. They're so _similar_. No matter who she is, she's still a hero. And Chat just never connected it.

He sees her standing out on her roof before he even lands. She has a quilt wrapped over her shoulders, and in her hand is a tiny red creature with black spots and blue eyes. Her kwami.

Chat lowers himself to the ground before her. It appears Marinette's tears have dried, and she's having trouble making eye contact with him. She has an arm wrapped loosely around her torso.

Chat clears his throat. "What happened to your stomach?"

She fiddles with the hem of her shirt. "I, uh, burned it. In the fire. But it doesn't hurt as bad anymore."

"Oh. That's good," he says quietly. They fall into silence again, and Chat tries to think of a good way to reignite the flames of conversation. His eyes land on the kwami in her palm. "Who's this?"

Marinette looks down at her kwami. "Oh. Right. Chat, this is Tikki. Tikki... you know him."

Tikki looks up at Chat. She gives him a smile, but given the gravity of the situation, it's more polite than genuine. "Hello, Chat Noir. It's nice to meet you."

"Likewise," he says kindly. And then he looks up at Marinette. "Mari, we—"

"The akuma," she cuts in, her voice tight. Her eyes are averted to the butterfly in his hand. "The akuma first. Then we talk."

Chat wordlessly hands over the akuma. Marinette says the words, "Tikki, spots on," and Chat watches as she's enveloped in pink light. And when the light fades, it's...

"Ladybug," he breathes. Knowing is one thing, but actually _seeing_ it is another. "Wow."

Ladybug doesn't look his way as she pulls out her yo-yo and purifies the akuma. They both watch as the white butterfly flies into the inky darkness, and then it's just them, and the words hanging between them like shards of broken glass.

She speaks before he can open his mouth. "I'm so sorry, Chat. I didn't... it wasn't right for me to dump all that on you. You're my partner and my best friend and you—" She rubs her arms sheepishly. "I just hope you'll still be there for me."

"Oh, Ladybug," he says softly. He reaches out a hand and grips hers. "I'll always be there for you. And right now, I'm here especially. I'm not going anywhere."

Her lip quivers, and she curses at herself. "Damn it, why can't I just stop _crying?"_

He lets out a small laugh. "It's okay. There's... a lot going on right now."

"You're telling me," she mutters. She sighs quietly and looks up at the sky.

"Marinette," he whispers, and he can feel her tense. But this is important, so he goes on. "Everything that Ladybug does, everything she's said and hoped and accomplished, it's all the same as Marinette. Your kwami isn't creating some facade of bravery or courage or whatever else you see in Ladybug that you can't see in yourself. That's all coming from _you_. Marinette is just as brave, just as kind, just as flawed, just as beautiful..." His voice comes out in a breath. He tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "Marinette and Ladybug are one and the same. Everything one does, the other does. _You_ are _yourself."_

"That's not true," she says hollowly.

"It is," he assures her. "Just because one wears a dazzling suit and the other doesn't, doesn't mean they're not equal. Ladybug gets more attention, but Marinette's heart is just as loving, just as big." He puts a hand over her chest. "She deserves some credit, too."

Ladybug stares at him with wide eyes, seemingly trying to comprehend his words. Eventually, she speaks, her voice small. "Adrien probably hates me."

"He very much does not hate you," Chat insists. "In fact, he probably loves you more than ever."

Her voice trembles. "You don't know that. I ignored him for weeks. I never explained myself. He probably thinks I'm a terrible—"

"He does _not_ think that," Chat says firmly. He licks his lips. "And... I can prove it."

Ladybug blinks. Confusion passes over her face. "Huh?"

Chat steps back. He grins nervously. "Just, uh, don't freak out, okay?"

"Chat? What are you—"

"Claws off."

The transformation drops. Ladybug stares. Adrien feels naked.

Then: "Oh my _fucking god."_

"...Surprise?"

"Oh my god. Oh no." Ladybug sinks to the ground, head in her hands, emotions filling her lungs. "He's—you're—oh _no."_

Adrien shuffles his feet. He looks down at Plagg, who's silently chewing on camembert and observing the situation with wide eyes. Seeing Adrien's look, the kwami just shrugs as if to say 'you're on your own, bucko.'

Adrien tucks Plagg in his pocket and lowers himself beside his partner. Feeling his presence, Ladybug puts her hands over her face. He scratches the back of his head. "Yeah, um. I guess I should apologize."

"You didn't do anything wrong," she mumbles into her hands. "I'm the one who couldn't keep my mouth shut."

"But maybe it's for the best," he says, trying to sound optimistic and somewhat succeeding. "Now I know why you've been so sad."

She peeks between her fingers, but doesn't say anything.

"I don't hate you, Mari. I could _never_ hate you. Whether you're Ladybug, or 'just' Marinette." He reaches for her hands and gently pulls them off her face. She doesn't resist. "Seeing you for who you really are, knowing the truth, in no way changes how I feel. If anything, it makes my feelings stronger."

Ladybug glances at him. She doesn't say anything.

Adrien slowly stands to his feet, ushering Ladybug to do the same. He has no idea what he's doing, but he figures he should keep talking until something comes out right. He's about to speak again when Ladybug's earrings beep, and suddenly a burst of pink light turns her back into Marinette. Tikki dives into Marinette's purse, leaving them alone.

The two of them stand there like they're finally seeing each other for the first time. (In a way, they really are.)

"I love you, Marinette," he says, his voice wavering, and suddenly Adrien recognizes this build up in his chest as the pressure of tears. "I miss your smile, and your sense of humor, and our conversations, and just spending _time_ with you, and—and I don't care about Ladybug's image. I just care about her heart. I care about _you."_ He shakes his head, as if to shake the tears out of his eyes. "And I understand if you don't want to be with your partner, I get it. But no matter what, I'm always gonna be here, and I'm always—"

Marinette slams her lips on his.

Adrien stumbles back a little, but quickly regains his balance. For a moment, he just stands there, until he realizes what's happening. But before he can even react, her lips are gone.

"I'm sorry," she bursts, and she looks like she's vibrating. "I'm sorry, I just needed you to shut up, because _of course_ I want to be with you. I love Chat, and I love you, and—" She lets out a squeak. Her face is red. "I love you, Adrien." Her eyes are shining and her warm breath is tickling his neck. "You really don't care? You don't care that we're—that Ladybug and I—"

"No," he breathes putting a hand on the back of her head. "It doesn't matter. No matter who you are, I'll love you unconditionally."

Marinette blinks, her breathing heavy. Then she says, "Thank _god,"_ and pulls him in for a kiss.

 **...**

(Later that night, when they lay beside each other on her bed, no masks standing in between them, he doesn't think this Valentine's Day could have gone any better.)

 **...**

* * *

 **...**

 ***throws confetti in the air* The end! Yay! (Sorry it took a while :P)**

 **If you have any fic requests, send them to my Tumblr ask box chatnono**

 **Thanks for reading :)**

 **-Libby**

 ****cross-posted on ao3**

 ****tumblr: chatnono**


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